An example of the adoption of ICT by a rural community is the Warana âWired Villageâ ... development in rural areas: first, before launching any ICT initiative, the ...
Warana: The Case of an Indian Rural Community Adopting Information and Communications Technology March 2002 Simone Cecchini, Poverty Reduction and Economic Management, The World Bank Monica Raina, Electronic Governance Centre, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad Abstract Information and Communications Technology (ICT) can be used as an effective tool for rural development. An example of the adoption of ICT by a rural community is the Warana “Wired Village” project, in the state of Maharashtra, India. There, the local cooperative is using ICT to streamline the operations connected with sugar cane growing and harvesting. This is benefiting small farmers, both in terms of transparency and of time saved on administrative transactions, as well as the cooperative, in terms of monetary gains. The Warana example also allows to draw four key lessons on the use of ICT for development in rural areas: first, before launching any ICT initiative, the information needs of a community should be thoroughly assessed; second, content and software applications should be developed with continuous involvement and feedback from the community; third, special emphasis should be placed on women and poor people’s access; and fourth, operators from the grassroots are probably the best agents to bring ICT to rural communities. Table of Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................................................ 2 Development of the Warana Group of Cooperatives.............................................................................. 2 Economic Activities of the Cooperatives ............................................................................................... 3 An Empowered Community ................................................................................................................... 3 New Challenges...................................................................................................................................... 4 The Warana Wired Village Project............................................................................................................. 4 Goals of the Project ................................................................................................................................ 4 How the Project Works........................................................................................................................... 4 Potential for new ICT applications ......................................................................................................... 5 Benefits from the project ........................................................................................................................ 5 Key Lessons ............................................................................................................................................... 5 Assessing the Information Needs the Community ................................................................................. 6 Local Ownership and Participation ........................................................................................................ 6 Women and Poor People’s Access ......................................................................................................... 6 Empowering Grassroots Operators......................................................................................................... 6 Conclusion: An ICT Project Strengthening an Empowered Community ................................................... 7 References .................................................................................................................................................. 8 Annex: The Warana Group of Cooperatives ............................................................................................. 9 Abbreviations and Acronym ICT Information and Communication Technology NIC National Informatics Centre IT Information Technology WGC Warana Group of Cooperatives $1=
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Acknowledgments We want to thank all the people who spent time meeting with us in Warana, including: Mr. Vinay Kore (Chairman, WGC), Dr. Sudhakar V. Kore (Medical Director, Mahatma Gandhi Hospital, New Pargaon, Kolhapur), Mr. B. T. Patil (A. Secretary, Tatyasaheb Kore Warana Sahakari Sakhar Karkhana Lt., Warananagar), Mr. S.S Patil (Assistant In-Charge, Shree Warana Agricultural Goods Processing Cooperative Society Ltd., Warananagar), Mrs. Kulkarni (Amrit Bhagini Mandal, Amritnagar Dist. Kolhapur), Mahila Grahaudyog (Lijat Papard), Arunjit of Village Old Paragaon, Madhukar Bhode of Vill. Talsande, Mahendra Naik of Vill. Tope (kiosk operators), and Mahadeo Rao Chandra Patil (chulha maker).
Introduction Information and Communications Technology (ICT) can be used as an effective tool for rural development in India and elsewhere in the developing world. 1 An example of the issues involved with the adoption of ICT by a rural community is given by the experience of the Warana Group of Cooperatives (WGC), which is using ICT to streamline the operations connected with sugar cane growing and harvesting. Warana is a well developed rural area located 30 kilometers north-west of the city of Kolhapur, in one of the richest states of India, Maharashtra.2 Much of Warana’s success is due to the presence of a strong cooperative movement, the WGC. About 50,000 farmers live in 100 villages spread in the 25,000 sq. kilometer area covered by the cooperative. The main economic activity is sugar cane growing and processing. ICT was brought to this area by the Warana "Wired Village" project, launched in 1998 as a collaboration between the National Informatics Centre (NIC), the Government of Maharashtra, the Warana Vibhag Shikshan Mandal (Education Department) and the WGC. The right conditions to bring ICT to Warana exist both in terms of human development and of infrastructure, as, for instance, there are no power failures in the area. The project aims at bringing agricultural, market and educational information to 70 villages around Warana Nagar and intends to simplify other business operations of the cooperative. Many of these features have not been yet implemented. Development of the Warana Group of Cooperatives The origins of the WGC date back to 1951, when Tatyasaheb Kore, a local small businessmen, understood that Warana, whose main source of livelihood was (and continues to be) sugar cane growing, needed its own sugar factory. At that time there was only one sugar cane factory in the area, located in Sangli, and farmers had no choice but selling their crop to the monopolist, with a very negative impact on their incomes. Kore started raising small amounts of money from farmers and in 1959 he was able to open a cooperative sugar factory in the village of Kodoli, now the hub of the WGC.3 Each farmer who had contributed to the creation of the sugar cane factory became a member of the sugar cane cooperative, which currently has a total of 20,000 members. The sugar factory, however, could cater only to the 15-20 percent of the population in Warana who had irrigated land. In order to create employment for the marginal farmers and landless laborers, in 1975 the WGC set up a dairy cooperative, which followed the successful model of
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The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) defines ICT as the set of activities that facilitates, by electronic means, the capturing, storage, processing, transmission and display of information. 2 Per capita income in Maharashtra stands at Rs. 19,207, which compares to an Indian average of Rs. 12,278 (Government of Maharashtra 2001). In terms of progress in raising average household consumption, Maharashtra was the fourth best performer among Indian states over the 1957-1991 period. The growth process, however, was associated with adverse distributional impacts from the point of view of the poor (Datt and Ravallion 1998). As a result, in 1993-94 the percentage of the rural population living below the poverty line stood at a high 38.6 percent, slightly above the national average of 37.5 percent (Chandrasekhar and Sen 1996). 3 Often times, farmers’ contributions were made in the form of gold jewels, part of women’s dowry. 2
Anand in the state of Gujarat.4 In the following years, many other activities were launched, and today, the WGC is formed by 25 cooperative societies with a total turnover of $130 million. Economic Activities of the Cooperatives The sugar cane factory, which produces 110,000 tons of sugar per year, employs 8,000 workers and collects sugar cane from about 35,000 farmers, is the main source of income for the Warana community.5 Other important centers of economic activity are a milk factory, a food processing unit, a chain of department stores, poultry farming, and a series of women’s cooperatives. The milk factory employs 1,200 workers and collects 280,000 liters of milk per day from the 125 milk societies belonging to the dairy cooperative.6 The dairy cooperative, in turn, provides a series of services to its members, from veterinary aid to cattle shed design, from insemination to subsidy on animal purchases. A central poultry unit provides layer birds, feed, veterinary facilities, and marketing of eggs for about 500 small units producing 13 million eggs each year for an income of $90 million. An export-oriented food processing unit (the Warana Agricultural Goods Processing Society) employs 400 workers, and produces fruit pulp and purees from fruit purchased from Warana (bananas) or from other parts of India (mango). The chain of department stores (the Warana Bazaar) has 350 employees working in 2 stores and 30 retail outlets in and around Warana. Finally, several cooperatives wholly controlled and managed by women are active in the production of snacks and baked goods, school uniforms, containers and labels for dairy products and employ hundreds of women (see Annex for a complete list of cooperative societies). An Empowered Community Warana is an example of a rural community which has been able to empower its people not only with stable sources of employment, but also through participation, access to health, education and financial services. All decisions concerning the sugar factory are taken by an elective body, the 19-members board of the sugar cooperative. Elections take place every five years in the 100 villages around Warana: three members are elected from each of five clusters of villages, while two seats on the board are reserved for women and two for representatives of backward castes. The board, in turn, elects a chairman and a vice-chairman. Vinay Kore, grandson of Tatyasaheb Kore, the founder of the cooperative, is the current chairman. Coordination of activities of the different cooperatives lies with Kore and the sugar factory managing directors. Healthcare, housing and banking are available to sugar factory cooperative members and to all the people living in the community. Education is available from primary school to college, and literacy is said to be close to 90 percent. Students from Warana attending the local Engineering College, which attracts students from different parts of India, are subsidized, having to pay $300 rather than the standard $1,000 for tuition. The Engineering College has 1,000 students, of 4
The farmer-owned Amul cooperative in Anand showed since the 1960s that an integrated approach along cooperative lines could enhance production, procurement and marketing of milk; it has become a model for most dairy development projects in India. 5 Sugar cane byproducts are processed at a paper manufacturing unit and at a distillery set up by the WGC. Bagasse, the waste material generated out of crushed sugarcane, is utilized to manufacture paper, and molasses are converted into industrial alcohol (Machado and Vagdaonkar 2000). 6 Products of the milk factory include pasteurized milk, milk powder, butter, sreekhand, lassi, and ghee. Owing to the high standards of the milk factory, Cadbury, a multinational corporation, produces its health foods in a nearby plant managed by the dairy cooperative itself. 3
which around 30 percent are women. People in Warana also have access to a 200-bed hospital,7 which was set up and continues to be financed by the WGC, with some government support. The hospital charges minimal fees to the members of the various cooperatives and offers free healthcare to the poor. It also avoids farmers trips to the city to receive healthcare (often accompanied by the whole family), which would otherwise lead to big losses of income. Farmers in the Warana area also have easy access to financial services, and can easily get consumer and housing loans. A women’s cooperative bank, whose board of directors is composed by women only, opened in 1990, has two branches, 1,835 members (all women), and a repayment rate of about 98 percent. New Challenges Nowadays, however, the WGC is facing a series of economic and social challenges. These include low sugar prices and difficulties in coordinating the many activities of a large and growing cooperative, which lead to losses in terms of efficiency and transparency. A big challenge is also to retain an educated youth in the area when the prospect of better opportunities beckons elsewhere. The Warana Wired Village Project Goals of the Project The Warana “Wired Village” project was initiated in 1998 by the Prime Minister’s Office Information Technology (IT) Task Force.8 The stated goal of the project is not only to increase the efficiency and productivity of the sugar cane cooperative, but also to provide a wide range of information and services to 70 villages around Warana. The project aims in fact at giving villagers access to information in local language about crops and agricultural market prices, employment schemes from the government of Maharashtra, and educational opportunities. However, some of the project’s features have not been implemented yet: these include distance learning at IT centers, the digitalization of land records, and the connection of all of the cooperative’s “business centers.” Information on sugar cane growing and agricultural prices lies unutilized and has not been updated since 1998; this information was centrally provided by NIC, and local staff was unable to update it independently. How the Project Works The 54 functioning village information kiosks are facilitating the sugar cane production process at three stages: first, during the yearly registration for plantation, when changes to property are recorded; second, with the issuance of harvesting permits; and third, with payments information. Farmers can go to the village information kiosks to receive payment slips. The sugar cooperative pays them for their crops in four installments which are credited directly to their bank accounts. The cooperative publishes payment dates on a local paper, so that farmers know when it is their turn to go to the kiosks. Moreover, farmers can purchase fertilizer at deposits located next to the 7
The “Mahatma Gandhi” is a general hospital with all specialties, although it is proving very difficult to get specialist doctors to a rural area like Warana. 8 At the time the Government of India had no Ministry of Information Technology, which was instituted only in October 1999. 4
kiosks in cash or using credit. If they buy using credit, they get a receipt for their purchase at the kiosk. Money spent on transport of the crop to the sugar factory is also entered in the system. Transporters fill tanks and at the end of the day all transactions are processed in the system. Village information kiosks have operators who feed the data into the computers, and are generally open between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. Depending on the size of the village served by a kiosk, between 30 and 100 farmers visit the kiosk daily. Village kiosks have a PC with a printer and most are connected to the sugar administrative building via wireless telephony. Some of them, though, are now saving information on floppy disks and bringing the disks to the sugar administrative building because they cannot afford big telephone bills. Kiosks also have email and Internet access, although connections are often very slow. Some kiosks are bypassing the sugar factory computer center and connect to the Internet through private providers. Potential for new ICT applications The area around Warana Nagar is already quite well served by telephone services. Many households have a telephone at home and there are several local and long distance phone booths. The community uses telephones mostly for social purposes, to keep in touch with other villagers and to organize weddings. But the Internet could answer other needs. Farmers, for instance, express interest in accessing information on agricultural techniques and innovations, as well as on crop prices; this information, if provided in local language, would in fact have a direct impact on their livelihood, allowing them to raise productivity and to sell their products at a better price. The younger generations, in turn, are more aware of the potential of the Internet. At an information kiosk which is connected to the Internet, for instance, they are already paying 45 cents per hour to surf the web (mostly for job searches and entertainment), and to email distant friends and relatives. Young people also express great interest in computer training, as this will help them find better job opportunities. Access to government services through the Internet would also benefit people in Warana. Currently most grievances about government services are said to be solved through the local village committees (panchayats); but when the panchayats cannot help, farmers have to go to the government offices in the city, which involves a great loss of time and money. Thus, the usefulness of sending grievances and to download government forms, as well as the possibility to access land records. Benefits from the project The project has already increased the efficiency of the sugar cane growing and harvesting process, both in terms of time saved by the farmers on administrative transactions as well as in terms of monetary gains. Before computerization, it used to take two or three days for farmers to find out how much they had spent and how much they had earned during the harvest, while now all it takes is a visit to the village kiosk. And as a result of computerization, fertilizer stocks are now smaller better managed, which is said to have brought savings of about US$750,000 to the cooperative. Key Lessons By examining the Warana “Wired Village” example, we can draw four key lessons for this and other ICT projects for rural development in India and elsewhere in the world.
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Assessing the Information Needs the Community Before launching any ICT initiative, the information needs of a community should be thoroughly assessed. Development practitioners and software developers might have in mind a very wide range of resources and applications that are of potential use to a community. However, it is information that has a direct impact on the livelihood of the people which matters most, and any application should be developed only after an accurate assessment of these needs. Rapid, participatory rural appraisals and other survey instruments have been used for several years to ensure community ownership of development programs. These tools could be used in the context of ICT initiatives. Local Ownership and Participation Once the information needs of the community are assessed, content and software applications should be developed with the continuous involvement and feedback from the community. For the Warana “Wired Village” project, NIC developed a software which is easy to use and with all information in Maharati, the local language. The process of development of the software, however, was far from ideal. The lack of local participation in content creation, as well as in software development, partly explains why much of the information, including that on sugar cane growing and agricultural prices, lies unutilized and has not been updated since 1998. If an incremental approach were followed, by which both content that responds to the most pressing information needs of the community and software that is appropriate for the local conditions are developed in collaboration with local staff, the WGC would have probably been able to update and make a good use of the information initially provided by NIC. 9 Local ownership and participation, in sum, ensure continuity, while a top-down approach will most probably lead to a waste of resources in the initial period of the project, without ensuring its future sustainability. Women and Poor People’s Access Particular efforts should be made to improve women and poor people’s access to information. In Warana, women generally visit information kiosks to obtain sugar factory services; but where the Internet is available, it is only men who are using it. Without finding means to get women involved in the use of ICT, and in particular to ensure that women are trained to become information kiosks operators, there is a severe chance that they will be further marginalized. Similar considerations apply to access to ICT by poor people. In Warana, the information kiosks are mostly accessed by members of the cooperative, farmers who own their land. The poorest, landless laborers and tribal groups, currently do not have a reason to visit the information kiosks, because they do not need the services connected with sugar cane growing and harvesting. However, information on government schemes offering employment, or on educational opportunities for children, would be of great importance to the poorest. Once such kind of information is made available, efforts should thus be made to improve access by the poorest to the kiosks. Empowering Grassroots Operators Finding people with the right mix of skills and motivations is a necessary condition for any project to succeed in bringing ICT to rural communities. In the case of Warana, operators at the 9
In Warana, there is a strong local IT capacity on which to build the project. The Engineering College has a computer laboratory with around 200 PCs, where each student can practice two hours per day, and offers courses in software development (Java, C++, etc.). 6
information kiosks generally come from the grassroots, and have a great faith in the potential of ICT to improve the standard of living of their community, especially of the rural youth. They feel that the Internet will allow young people to find information about educational and job opportunities, and they see IT as the best sector where to find stable and well-paid employment. Many operators have the capability of teaching computer skills and software to children and youth, and would be willing to provide training if given the necessary incentives. Furthermore, some of the operators have good programming skills; in the village of Tope, for instance, an operator has developed a database to manage the local store’s orders and purchases. Some of these young operators have had job experiences in the city and decided to return to the Warana for the strong attachment to their community. If they are given the necessary incentives, these grassroots operators can become champions for ICT in their villages, easing access to information for farmers, providing training to children, and creating new economic opportunities through software development. Conclusion: An ICT Project Strengthening an Empowered Community In conclusion, we observe that it is not the “Wired Village” project that has empowered the Warana community; this is rather an example of a fairly developed and empowered community adopting ICT to bring efficiency and transparency gains to its main economic activity, sugar cane production. Thanks to its good levels of human development and infrastructure, the Warana community will be able to use ICT to further streamline other services offered by the cooperative and to give its people wider access to knowledge and information through the Internet.
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References Cecchini, Simone. “Information and Communications Technology for Poverty Reduction in Rural India.” World Bank: Washington D.C., forthcoming. Chandrasekhar C.P. and Abhijit Sen. “Statistical Truths: Economic Reform and Poverty”. Frontline, Madras, February 23, 1996. Datt, Gaurav and Martin Ravallion, "Why Have Some Indian States Done Better Than Others at Reducing Rural Poverty?", Economica, Vol. 65, No. 257, Feb., 1998, pp.17-38. Government of Maharashtra. Maharashtra at a Glance. 2001. [www.maharashtra.gov.in] Kohli Vanita. “Getting Wired, the Warana Way”, in Business World, February 22, 1999. [www.businessworldindia.com/archive/990222/mktg4.htm] Machado, Julius and Vinu Wadgaonkar. “From Wilderness to Wonder: The Warana Miracle”, in NABARD Parivar, House Journal of NABARD (National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development, vol. 13, no. 2-3, July- September 2000. National Informatics Centre. “Project Proposal for Wired Village Project at Warana Nagar, Maharashtra”. NIC (WR) Pune, June 22 1998. Vijayadita N. “A Wired Village: The Warana Experiment”, in Information and Communication Technology in Rural Development, Case Studies from India, Subhash Bhatnagar and Robert Schware editors. World Bank Institute Working Papers, October 2000.
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Annex: The Warana Group of Cooperatives 1. Warana Cooperative Sugar Factory Ltd. 2. Warana Cooperative Milk Produce Processing Society Ltd. 3. Warana Cooperative Bank 4. Warana region Cooperative Grahak Mandal 5. Warana Poultry Cooperative Society 6. Sahyadri Cooperative Poultry Society 7. Vishwanath Cooperative Poultry Society 8. Warana Worker Vividh Working Cooperative Society 9. Warana Agriculture Goods and Processing Society 10. Warana Cooperative Industrial Colony 11. Warana Women Cooperative Credit Society 12. Savitri Women Cooperative Industrial Society 13. Amrit Sevak Cooperative Society 14. Satyavathi Cooperative House Construction Society 15. Nivritti Cooperative Housing Society 16. Educational Institute - Warana Vibhag Shikshan Mandal - Tatyasaheb Kore Institute of Engineering and Technology - Yashwantrao Chavan Warana University - Tatyasaheb Kore Industrial Training Centre - Tatyasaheb Kore Training and Production Centre - Warana School - Warana Vidyamandir - Warana Nursery School - Warana Satkarya Savanrdak Mandal 17. Warana Foods Private Ltd. 18. Mahatma Gandhi Medical Trust 19. Warana Bhagini Mandal 20. Lijjat Pappad Centre 21. Warana Sugar Worker's Society 22. Warana Exercise Centre 23. Warana Youth Centre 24. Sharada Wachak Mandir 25. Warana Printing Press Source: NIC 1998
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