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Project: Linux  News
Report from the IT and Empowerment conference, India
By Madanmohan Rao <madanr@microland.net>
Posted: ( 2000-12-18 10:11:30 EST by )
IT has been called the great leveller, but what really is the situation at
the grassroots level? Freeware and open source perfectly complement and
extend the goals of the NGOs. While Linux certainly has worked for
some organizations, there is more work to be done.
Freeware, shareware will play key role in bringing Indian non-profit
organizations online Can the Internet help empower people - or does it actually reinforce
existing inequities in society? Can the non-profit, academic, government
and private sectors together address, analyze and assess the
socio-economic consequences of IT diffusion in urban and rural societies? Close to a hundred delegates debated these issues in Bangalore recently at
the two-day conference provocatively titled "IT and Empowerment: The
Greater the Access, The More the Divide?" Hosted by Indian non-governmental organizations Madhyam, Voices, South
Asia Media Association, and the Delhi office of the German NGO Friedrich
Eberhardt Stiftung, the event promises to become an annual affair to
broaden the scope of dialogue and action on the larger context of IT
issues. Publishing of conference proceedings and online discussion will be
coordinated via a group of Web sites including Indian Webzine INOMY.
Earlier conferences in Bangalore - such as BangaloreIT.com - have also
addressed similar issues, and in 1998 the Bangalore Declaration on IT in
Developing Nations was passed, drawing attention to the opportunities and
challenges of the Internet economy. Plans to bridge the digital divide must address not just basic
connectivity issues, but also local content, affordable infrastructure,
online/offline discussion fora, sustainable business models, user-friendly
interfaces, multi-channel media synergies, local skillsets, and
multi-sector cooperation. For instance, the
Center for Education and Documentation in Mumbai and
Bangalore assists NGOs not just via Internet access facilities but also
workshops in Intranet management and the use of freeware and shareware
like Linux. "The Internet and Intranet are useful for furthering documentation and
information-linking activities as well as quick communication and
coordination among NGOs," said Shubha Chacko, an activist at CED. "Our Indialink initiative helped link NGOs online and coordinate activism
around environmental, gender and nuclear energy issues," she said. Coordination of conferences via the Net has helped develop less of a local
bias and include more participation from different parts of the country,
she observed; for instance, conferences held in the capital city can become
less "Delhi-centric." "We are strongly in favor of Linux. The basic open philosophy of Linux
resonates with the outlook of NGOs as well," Chacko observed. CED uses
freeware to manage document systems as well as email archives. Linux is good for low-budget organizations; it is very easy to get support
online from the Linux user community for problems you may encounter, Chacko
added. CED has been popularizing Linux among NGOs via educational workshops
and demos. Getting low cost software and content is also a concern for voluntary
training organizations like Each One, Teach One. Based in Bangalore, it has
10 computers for training underprivileged children. Freeware and shareware can play a key role here as well, such as Linux,
Apache, Star Office, and iLeap (for Indian language tools). The
Mumbai-based site FreeOS.com is attempting to popularize local flavors of
Linux in India, among corporates as well as NGOs. Work is being done in India on visual (non-textual) interfaces to the Web,
as well as on translating content between English and various Indian
languages so as to bridge language and literacy gaps. Non-resident Indians successful in Silicon Valley are plowing money and
expertise back into IT ventures in their home country. For instance, B.V.
Jagadeesh, CTO of Web hosting pioneer Exodus Communications, has invested
angel funds in Bangalore-based Enablers.net, which is launching a low cost
email reading device called iConnect. "The future is in networking. NGOs need to actively work towards making
their voices heard in cyberspace," Chacko urged. "It is important for us to benchmark regional knowledge-driven
initiatives," said Aditya Dev Sood, a graduate student at the University
of Chicago and founder of the Bangalore Centre for Knowledge Societies. Various hardware and mediation options are emerging for local Internet
access, said Sood, such as low-cost e-kiosks (or e-iosks) and simple
devices like loudspeakers to disseminate online messages. "While the state and corporate sector have begun working together to build
telecom infrastructure, these efforts will not significantly improve the
lives of rural citizen-consumers unless the NGO sector -- particularly
grass-roots NGOs -- begin addressing the challenge and possibilities of IT
and the Net," Sood said. "Given its mix of good IT skills and yet poor human development indices,
India has a lot of responsibility towards the rest of the developing world
in exploring such new IT frontiers," said Sood. At a time when over 100 FM radio licenses have been issued in the country,
commercial and community radio can help overcome the "last mile" problem by
facilitating Internet access via facilities at the radio station. Elsewhere
in South Asia, a rural community initiative in Kothmale in Sri Lanka uses
community radio as a bridging device to facilitate online information flow
to rural communities; sites like InterWorldRadio.org also provide online
content for use by radio stations. "The Net can help NGOs in communicating across borders and time zones, and
also assist in coordinating projects. NGO Web sites can give their funders
direct access to accounting and activity information," said K. Gurumurthy,
consultant at e-finance services company iFlexSolutions.com (formerly
called CITIL). Successful and timely project management for IT ventures will be key
concerns for NGOs, he said. Everybody is entering villages today with computers - companies, government
agencies, research groups, and NGOs, observed Sunil Abraham of
Bangalore-based Web solutions firm IndiaCares.org, which designs Web sites
for NGOs free of cost. While providing local training in IT skills will entail significant
resources, several experiments (like NIIT's observation of learned surfing
behavior among slum kids) show that many of these skills can be refined
hands-on. Device and costs need to come down; donations of older and used PCs by
Indian corporates and software companies could play a significant role
here. "Unfortunately, because of legal loopholes, the Software Technology
Parks of India are not allowed to donate their older machines to NGOs. This
needs to be changed," Abraham urged. Organizations like WorldComputerExchange.org are playing a prominent role
in this regard, by re-circulating used PCs. As for citizens' rights to information, the Net can be a democraticising
medium, said Bangalore-based advocate Lawrence Liang, who runs a law site
called IndiaLawInfo.com. Numerous online initiatives around the world - in countries like Iceland,
Italy, Spain and Sweden -- are empowering citizens with access to basic
information about health, social amenities, and government policymaking. On the flip side, e-surveillance by private and government agencies is also
increasing, Liang cautioned. Legislation like the IT Act 2000 and the upcoming Convergence Bill are
geared more towards e-commerce activities, and not towards social movements
or citizens rights. "The IT Act 2000 requires a huge bureaucracy to support features like
digital certificates and digital signatures," Liang added. Other notable South Asian NGO resources online include BytesForAll.org,
Child Relief and You, CauseAnAffect.org, India Network Foundation, and
Jiva. But in many NGOs, there are people resistant to the introduction and
adoption of IT. "NGOs should remain dedicated to the issue of empowerment
by multiple means, and not act as new middlemen who deny their
constituencies the potential benefits of IT," cautioned Munira Sen of
Madhyam. NGOs must work towards giving people an informed choice with respect to new
media, she concluded.
Other articles by Madanmohan Rao
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