Sustainability of Kiosk based rural ICT initiatives: a case study of Gyan Sanchar project

Abstract

All over the world, Information and communication Technologies are being used increasingly to deliver education, knowledge, information and other services in rural areas. ICT based kiosks are multipurpose centers operating on resource sharing basis with PC as focus of service delivery. As aggregator of rural demand they offer all ICT related online services, computer based offline services, retail selling of other products and services. India is supposed to be an IT super-power and a major recruiting ground for ICT professionals worldwide. This has resulted in lot of experimentation being carried out in form of kiosks based ICT initiatives for delivering of services in rural India. Several ICT projects like Gyandoot, E-sewa, Bhoomi, Friends etc use the new communication technologies, to conceptualize and implement public-private partnership models based on rural kiosks. Gyan Sanchar is one such initiative that was started in 33 villages of Babai and Khirkiya tehsils of Hoshangabad and Hardadistricts of Madhya Pradesh. Few research studies have been undertaken on the ICT based rural kiosk initiatives in India. The gist of these studies suggests that the kiosk based rural ICT initiatives have succeeded in creating some impact on developmental process in villages. How ever,these studies also raised doubts on the sustainability of these kiosks. The larger question that remains to be addressed is Why within a project some of the kiosks are performing well while others are not? This research looks within one ICT based rural initiative project (Gyan Sanchar) and attempts to find out which kiosks are better placed than others in terms of sustainability within this project and tries to identify the factors responsible for the same. The research findings indicate that sustainability of kiosk based rural ICT initiatives is a major issue and kiosks of Gyan Sanchar project are no exceptions. The financial performance of the kiosks varies over a wide spectrum. Significant correlation were found between performance of kiosk and total literacy of village, percentage of women out of total users, kiosk working hours, computer literacy/training of kiosk operator, KO s (kiosk operator s) education qualification, revenue potential of village, number of villages served by kiosk, average hours of Electric supply per day to village, KO s work experience, KO s capital stake in business and KO s Affluence. Finally, based on the research findings, policy recommendations have been suggested for setting up kiosk based rural ICT projects so as to make them sustainable.