Cybercafes reach the farmers of India

2000-06-01

If there is one thing that India has got, it is railways. With railways come both stations and many, many thousands of miles of straight track, the latter including channels for telecommunications cables. Just north of Madras in the Bay of Bengal, a pilot project has started which will link five stations to the Internet by the end of June. BBC News tells us that, at each station there will be a cybercafe, with Internet terminals available for rent on an hourly basis. Perhaps more importantly, one of the stations will act as a wireless base station providing Internet services to up to fifteen households.

From one perspective, what we are seeing here is how existing technologies can be combined innovatively to spread the reach of the Internet. Like Tele2 in the UK, which uses a combination of radio, microwave and land-based services to provide high-speed Internet access to business parks, this is about combining technologies in the most cost-effective way. In a way, each technology is competing against the others, encouraging progress and exerting a downward pressure on costs.

In addition there is a more important process at play here. Technology does not exist for its own sake, but as an enabler. To coin a cliché, the Internet is the great leveller, both for businesses and for individuals, and that is what will give countries still at the trailing edge of technology some freedom to catch up.

Not that India has anything to be ashamed of, of course. We have already written about how the second most valuable software entrepreneur in the world, Azim Premji, has built his fortune on India’s ability to provide high quality software at a lower cost. Similarly, Indian companies such as Hexaware have shown how innovation does not need to be at the expense of software quality. All the same, Indian cities have many advantages over its rural communities. The Great Leveller is now turning its attention to this divide.

What can the Internet offer the rural population of India? The answer is simple – education. The wealth of information resources offered by the Internet, and the form in which these resources are offered, go hand in hand: the Internet never sleeps, and computer-based software never loses patience. Furthermore, once the connection is in place, the majority of resources are available for free.

There is still plenty to be done – this project is a pilot, after all. Many villages only get electricity once or twice a day (again, a problem to which technology may well have the answers). Internet resources may not be entirely suitable in their current form (but could be made suitable, once the need exists). Educational organisations used to working in one way may well find that it is worth their while supporting the efforts of this project, rather than supporting educational processes directly as they have in the past. One thing is for sure - the tendrils of the Internet may reach around the globe, but it will not truly be a global phenomenon until the world’s population has access to it. The Great Leveller will not rest until old and young, rich and poor, city, and country, West and East, are afforded equal access to this fundamental resource

(First published 1 June 2000)