E-Governance and Rural India 

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Thursday, February 10, 2005

Q&A: e-Chaupal

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CEO, ITC Agri Businesses Organisation 

The e-Chaupal effort of ITC is the most quoted example of a successful IT enabled initiative in the rural sector, using IT. The e-chaupal project won last years' Best IT implementation award from PCQuest. Are there lessons that e-governance projects can learn from e-chaupal?

We catch up with Sivakumar S, CEO of ITC Agri Businesses Organisation and the moving force behind e-chaupal .

Under the e-chaupal project, you have successfully built IT infrastructure in rural areas. What experiences would you want to share with e-governance projects trying to reach the rural population?
There are three significant speed breakers here, availability of power, access to information (Internet) and the learning curve in learning to use computers and the Net. We addressed each of these separately.

In the case of power, we supplemented the local availability with solar panels that were used to power the computers in the villages. To take the Internet to the villages, we use VSATs. And for the learning curve, we spend a significant amount of time, money and effort in training all the users, and not just the custodians of the systems in the villages.

How does one go about identifying areas that can be computerized and can help the rural population?
There are many intermediaries in the system. The numerous intermediaries' make for a weak infrastructure, and deliver critical value in each leg at very low cost. A more effective model must be able to leverage the physical transmission capabilities of these intermediaries, yet disintermediate them from the flow of information.

What tips would you like to give on choosing the right technologies for such an implementation?
Create flexible infrastructures that can resolve the tyranny of trading off between opportunity for innovation and achieving efficiency through proven systems. This enables experimentation and conformance simultaneously. A good example is the ERP system we are building using a component based architecture as opposed to a process-based architecture. 

What about the need to upgrade or change technologies with time? Any practical ideas on that?
Emerging technologies have the power to make a technology based business model irrelevant. So, you need to monitor potentially disruptive technology at its nascent stage for possible future impact. Alternative technologies that offer similar features at lower costs need to be tested and adopted for lower overall costs of ownership.

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