Address at the Convention of the National Alliance and the First Convocation of the Jameshedji Tata National Virtual Academy

Knowledge Sources and System Integration

I am very happy to inaugurate the second convention on National Alliance and the first convocation of the National Virtual Academy (NVA) for rural transformation. The aim of National alliance to achieve Mission 2007 that is to make every village a Knowledge Centre, is indeed a noble mission. One of the important missions, is generating capacity for creation of employment. If not, knowledge centres will become ineffective. I am delighted to know that as a first step the alliance partners are planning to connect 25,000 villages as Village Knowledge Centres. I am sure that ultimately the National Alliance will be able to develop a user controlled, owned and managed network which will help to reach the rural population in terms of information, knowledge and skill empowerment.

Fellows of NVA

I have seen the composition of NVA Fellows 2005. It is indeed a celebration of our rural core competence. My greetings to the organizers, who have thought of such innovative schemes to recognize and train the people who are wedded to Rural development and empowering them to promote rural transformation in certain areas. Particularly, the choice of fellows such as Mr. Anwarji of Balipara, Assam with the core competence of education, suitable for local people in areas such as literacy, sanitation and use of ICT. Ms. Pushpa Ben of Village Sokhada, Gujarat with the core competence on water conservation and vegetable vending; Ms. Vijyantha Raut of Nimgoan Bhogi, Maharastra with the core competence of social work particularly in micro credit movement, Mr. Narsingh Singh from Charanwala Bajju village of Rajasthan with the core competence of Computer education in rural area; Mr. V. Deenadhayalan from Umbalchery village, Tamil Nadu with the core competence of indigenous live stock keeping and also practicing animal healing using herbal plants. This clearly indicates the spectrum of experience of the fellows selected. It is true for all the 140 fellows of NVA.

However I have a suggestion to give. NVA fellowships in number of states like UP, Bihar and many more have to have membership as in the case of states like Gujarat and Tamilnadu.

Now I would like to discuss, how these recipients of fellowship can become the forerunners in transforming the rural areas. Actually I am going to take a class for our friends fellows (140 in number). You can also call it a Convocation Address to NVA fellows. The topic I have selected for the lecture "Knowledge Sources and System Integration".

This consists of five parts: The first part gives some experiences with the knowledge centres working at various places in the country; second part presents purpose of Village Knowledge centres in relation to the integrated development of Rural Areas of the country through PURA; third part deals with the examples of PURA in action through three PURA systems and also a design of Coastal PURA in association with HUDCO; Fourth part presents the working Domain services for effective knowledge acquisition to the PURA complexes; Fifth part consolidates the flow chart of data needed for Farmers, fishermen and also to the entire rural population in an integrated way for the sustainable development. Particularly these aspects, NVA fellows may like to know in detail.

Some Experience with Village Knowledge Centres

In June 2005, when I visited Nagapattinam, I have seen the Village Resource Centre established by TATA Tsunami Relief Committee in association with MSSRF at Akkaraipettai. When I discussed with the young members who are operating the system, I found they are helping the locals by imparting education through computers, helping the Self Help Group Members to maintain their accounts, providing weather and sea state forecast data, etc. While it is very good, the important issue of providing a live data base on various services to the fishermen and farmers needs to be upgraded. This has to be a coordinated effort of various institutions. I appreciate their contribution to the tsunami relief and rehabilitation operations.

Last week, I inaugurated Six Village Resource Centre from Ettimadi, Coimbatore district of Tamil Nadu, which has been established by Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetam in partnership with ISRO. They provide tele-education, tele-medicine services to the 6 villages located in Tamil nadu and Kerala through video conferencing.

I also understand the RASI Scheme of Tamil Nadu implemented at Mellur taluk in Madurai district is also providing the knowledge connectivity to the villages. Which enables the local unemployed youth to setup the village kiosks to provide computer literacy among the villagers, Internet access through CorDECT Wireless system with a limited bandwidth and enables small value added services through computers with digital photographs, email access. This also helps the villagers to get birth certificates from the local government authorities and get the health care advice from the Madurai Aravind Eye hospital through email.

I appreciate the efforts taken by these organisations for knowledge enabling the villagers the Village Knowledge Centres. These VKCs will act as a tool for the delivering the knowledge. How to equip the VKCs with knowledge and purpose in an integrated way with sustainable developmental framework is the challenge?

PURA (Providing Urban Amenities in Rural Areas)

Nearly 700 million people of India live in the rural areas

in 600,000 villages. Connectivity of village complexes providing economic opportunities to all segments of people is an urgent need to bridge the rural-urban divide, generate employment

and enhance rural prosperity. We need to innovate to increase

connectivities to the villages making clusters out of them even while retaining their individualities. Essential Connectivities: The integrated method

which will bring prosperity to rural India is called PURA, which envisages four connectivities: the physical connectivity of the village clusters through quality roads and transport; electronic connectivity through tele-communication with high bandwidth fiber optic cables reaching the rural areas from urban cities and through internet kiosks; knowledge connectivity through education, skill training for farmers, artisans and craftsmen and entrepreneurship programmes. These three connectives will lead to economic connectivity through starting of enterprises with the help of banks, micro credits and marketing of the products. We need to establish approximately 7000 PURA Complexes in the country encompassing approximately 2.3 lakh Village Panchayats.

Village Knowledge Centres - Configured

For providing the knowledge connectivity to the PURA complexes, Village Knowledge Centres will act as frontline delivery system. I visualize establishment of village knowledge centers in these Panchayats to empower the villagers with the knowledge and to act as a local center for knowledge connectivity for the villagers within the overall framework of PURA.

VKC: The Village Knowledge Centre should provide the essential data required for the targeted population such as farmers, fishermen, craftsmen, traders, businessmen, entrepreneurs, unemployed youth and the students. It has to be acquired by visiting the village, talking to the rural people, by understanding their requirement and core competence. Providing meteorological data for both farmers and fishermen has to be area specific, covering say 20 or 30 villages in the vicinity of sea coast or in the farming area. Local relevance of information offered is essential. Users have simple needs of information but often it is a tough problem for system integrators because of the need of updation of data. Trained manpower with experience have to be deployed to generate information which can explain to the people in simple terms the meteorological data, weather data, marketing data on fish, agricultural and other rural commodities. These data have to come from various connected institutions which provide the service to the people on a timely basis periodically. But the transformation of data into user friendly information on a regular updated basis is the real challenge. The main focus of the Village Knowledge Centre should be to empower the youth to undertake development tasks of the villages and establish the rural enterprises which will provide large scale employment to the youth of the village. So, it is essential to skill enable and knowledge enable through the Academic institutions, industry, banking and marketing institutions. VKC should act as a facilitator. Blended knowledge is a better knowledge.

Infrastructure and Connectivity: A low cost multi-task handheld computer with GPS and wireless mobility should be developed by the private industries and organisations and should reach the fishermen and farmers in different parts of the country. They should add value to this tool for their benefit to increase their earning capacity. Village Knowledge Centre should have a computer terminal, wireless (Wi-Max) connections or fibre broadband or satellite connectivity to connect to the Nodal Centres for acquisition of knowledge and dissemination of updated real time data.

Nodal Data Centre and Services: Each PURA should have "Nodal PURA Knowledge Data centres", which should be the HUB for all the activities creating the vibrancy in the PURA as a viable sustainable business proposition. These ?Nodal PURA Knowledge Data Centres? should be linked to the nominated domain service providing organisations in Agriculture including fisheries, Cottage and Small scale industries and commerce, Education and human resource development and health care sectors. These domain institutions will have a mechanism to create continuously updated information systems needed to service the Village Knowledge Centres.

With this experience, we should make the village resource centres as the knowledge centres in the villages in a fully connected environment with a mission of skill and knowledge enabling people leading to sustainable economic development in the rural areas. Now I would like to discuss about the working PURA models where the focus is on Employment generation.

PURA in Action

I have visited many rural areas, and I have seen some working systems of PURA such as Gujarat and Rajasthan Border - BAIF model, Vallam Periyar PURA model near Thanjavur, Isletwald Village in Switzerland. I have also recently visited Tsunami affected villages of Nagapattinam and suggested the implementation as "Coastal PURA" to the Nagapattinam District Administration and Rehabilitation Planning agencies. Through the study of these PURA Models, NVA fellows will get a feeling of the requirement of knowledge in our village setup to bring sustainable prosperity to our villages.

Bharatiya Agro Industries Foundation (BAIF) Model: I would like to share with you an integrated village cluster

development programme which I experienced during my visit with Dr. Narayan G Hegde, an IIM graduate who is an expert in farming and dairying, two village clusters of south Gujarat - Chonda and Lachakadi, with a population of 5000. In these villages every summer the tribal people migrate to nearby towns. The BAIF model was installed in these two villages with peoples' co-operation and the participation of state authorities. Firstly water harvesting was undertaken to get water for every individual. Every home was provided with livestock and also a market for milk. Simultaneously, fruit orchards were established with various fruit crops such as cashew and mangoes, which are tolerant to drought. When I visited, these villages, there was a connecting road and water ponds. The tribal population, with radiant smiles on their faces, was harvesting crops, packaging and carrying milk to different supply points. I happened to see the economic growth and prosperity of the tribal people, which has been facilitated by BAIF with people's participation. I understand that this model - Vadi (Orchard) has now been replicated in many places by the state governments of Maharashtra, Gujarat and Rajasthan. The project was implemented through Self Help Groups (SHGs). The groups took the responsibility to help the weaker members. This boosted progress. The results were phenomenal. In Ghatol cluster in Udaipur out of 3000 poor families, more than 90% were able to earn Rs. 20,000 per annum. Efficient watershed development not only helped to ensure the availability of safe drinking water throughout the year but also boosted their crop yields from 30% to 80%. Over 800 hectares of Anola orchards were established for the first time in the region, which started yielding from the third year. The farmers groups have started processing and marketing the fruits. The entire village cluster was self-sufficient in food supply. Dairy and animal husbandry further boosted their family income from 30 to 60%. These families had formed 71 Self Help Groups and 24 village level organizations. They have built their own corpus of Rs. 30 lakhs. Similar success was achieved in Banswada district. In Gokulpura cluster in Bundi district in Rajasthan, watershed based multi-disciplinary development facilitated the local farmers to grow two crops during the year while the entire district was receiving food aid under the drought relief. This happened in a region where the average annual rainfall is less than 700 mm and the region was facing chronic drought successively for the third year.

Periyar PURA - Transformation of Rural Society: Last year I had visited Periyar Maniammai College of Technology for women and inaugurated a project called Periyar PURA (Providing Urban amenities in Rural Areas) Complex. Over 65 villages near Vallam, Thanjavur district of Tamilnadu, have been transformed as a PURA Cluster. This PURA complex has all the three connectivities ? physical connectivity, which has a circular road and interconnecting roads covering major villages along with bus transport system, it provides electronic connectivity through internet kiosks and knowledge connectivity through its academic background - leading to economic connectivity to the 65 villages.

The centre of activity emanates from the women

engineering college that provides the electronic and knowledge connectivity. Periyar PURA has health care centres, primary to post graduate level education and vocational training centres. This has resulted in large scale employment generation and creation of number of entrepreneurs with the active support of 850 self-help groups.

They have innovative water management schemes for irrigation and providing potable water for all the village citizens. All 65 Periyar PURA villages are having only rain fed irrigation. Two hundreds acres of waste land has been developed into cultivable land with innovative water management schemes such as contour ponds and water sheds for storing and irrigating the fields. All the villagers are busy

in either cultivation, planting Jatropha, herbal and medicinal plants, power generation using bio-mass, food processing and above all running marketing centres. Due to shortage of rainfall in that locality, farmers were suffering due to scarcity of water not only for agriculture but also for drinking purposes. Keeping this in mind, Periyar PURA developed six percolation ponds and five check dams to harness the rain water amounting to 2.73 lakh cubic meter per year. This water is supporting the irrigation of 300 acres of land through recharging their open wells and bore wells. It also supplies drinking water to the people. Periyar PURA has also developed alternate practices such as Contour lands, check dams across natural streams for water conservation and developed a model for irrigation for conservation of water. More than 5000 farmers are benefiting from this program. This example will be useful for water management in PURA complexes. Recently Periyar PURA has brought number of employment oriented schemes to the Tsunami affected Nagapattinam villages and trained the Self-Help Groups on the Tiles making, paper manufacturing, alternative building blocks manufacturing and number of commonly used items required in the rural and urban market. This single women engineering college have empowered the villagers through the skill oriented training, provision of finance and provision of market connectivity for their produce.

Iseltwald Village in Switzerland - a PURA like model: I also visited a small fishing village named Iseltwald in Switzerland. It is on South shore of lake Brienz. It is a well known fishing village with popular lake side restaurants. It has unspoiled nature tranquility and relaxation in fresh air with quality environment. It can be accessed by road and waterways. It has a total population of 410 people and an area of approximately one square kilometers. The main enterprise of the village is tourism and fishing. They have got a school and playgrounds in the centre of the village. The people in the village are employed in looking after the tourists and running hotels, fishing, working in vineyards and breweries. 5 to 10% of the people go to neighbouring towns for

employment. Total employment and the value added products provide higher income to all the residents of the village. This leads to higher standard of living which is equivalent to staying in any one of the cities and also the availability of facilities through connectivity so that the villagers remain in their villages without migrating to cities. Education facilities, healthcare centres and employment opportunities are all available within the village itself like what we envisage in the PURA.

Coastal PURA: When I visited Nagapattinam, after reviewing the Tsunami rehabilitation schemes, I proposed the creation of Coastal PURAs in this region, which is an ideal solution for bringing sustainable prosperity to this region. The salient features of this PURA are the following:

1. Physical Connectivity: Construction of jetties and small and medium sized boat landing centres on the coast in the interval of 10 to 15 km range. Each of these will have a good link road to the main coastal road. Establishment of Community Sheds for repair of nets, storing the nets and related equipments of the fishermen and Boat building and repair small scale industries.

2. Electronic Connectivity: All the fishing villages on the coastal areas have to be linked with the District Headquarters through the Broadband fibre and wireless connectivities. Fishermen should be provided with

broadcasting facilities through Satellite radios and HAMSAT network. Mobile cell phone with GPS facility may be provided for each boat for emergency communication. This will also provide the local fishing population data, local meteorological and local sea state data through SMS from the Ground Village knowledge Centres obtained from near by the Meteorological station, Disaster Management stations, District Headquarter station and the other service providers.

3. Knowledge Connectivity: Government should facilitate the training of fishermen in cost effective safe fishing techniques, application of technology for improving the productivity, storage and preservation systems and cost effective marketing, banking & financing systems through the District Headquarters Studio and the connected village knowledge centers. It will also provide adequate warning data for the fishermen on the sea to return to home safely.

4. Economic Connectivity: These three connectivities will motivate and enable the local population to create Cold

Storage infrastructure, Fish processing and packaging and marketing for realizing the value added price. This will also provide alternative employment oriented schemes during non-fishing days and for people who are involved in agriculture and other activities. Here I would like to appreciate the work of Alaimagal Self Help Group who in partnership DRDA and NGO's have successfully captured an export order of quality candles and other crafts products to Netherlands. Such economically oriented job creating activities should be the objective of our rural development schemes.

So far, we saw certain live PURAs in action and the Village Knowledge Centres. How do we get the periodically updated and relevant information to the Village Knowledge Centres, so that the best knowledge base is available to the farmers, fishermen and the craftsmen for making the product competitive and bring prosperity to the Village complexes particularly with the focus of employment generation.

Domain Service Provider for PURA Complex I have studied a system which is working and used by the farmers and fishermen in different parts of the country. This is called the Kisan Call Centre (KCC) established by the Ministry of Agriculture in partnership with TCIL (Telecommunication Consultant India Ltd) a Government Enterprise under Ministry of Communication and Information Technology. Kisan Call Centre offers three levels of interaction and

support in Agriculture, fisheries and Animal Husbandry domains through the nationally nominated experts and Corresponding directorates at the Central level. In the last one year of its operation the call centre have provided consultancy, information, assistance and guidance to over 5 lakhs callers from the villages of eight states. Anywhere in India, people can call 1551 as a toll free number to get the services. The top users of the scheme are Maharastra and Tamil Nadu followed by UP and Rajasthan. I have studied some of the typical questions answered by the call centres, which I would like to share with you. Particularly the fellows of NVA would like to take a note of it.

1. Question from Warangal: In cotton, what are the suitable varieties to be taken and when can we avail the varieties?

2. Question from Anathapur: What is the seed treatment of Groundnut with dosage?

3. Question from Cuddapah: What are the ways to get the Citrus fruits ripened quickly?

4. Question from Indore: In which market will I get good price for my cotton produce?

5. Question from Jalandhar: What is the method of controlling yellowing in Paddy nursery?

These questions were answered by the Kisan call centre agricultural and fisheries specialists in level-1, level-2 agricultural and fisheries experts and level-3 directorate officials and enabled the farmers to implement the suggestions. This is the working system for providing domain services in the field of agriculture, fisheries and animal husbandry. NVA fellows can interact with Kisan call centres and use their information for their respective States.

Now I would like to mention the typical knowledge requirements of two areas: Agriculture and Fishing.

PURA Nodal Knowledge Data Centre - Flow Chart

As we have seen in the Kisan Call Centre setup, similar Domain Service Provider Call centres are required in the filed

of Commerce and Industry, Entrepreneurial skill Development and employment generation, Travel and Tourism, Banking and Insurance, Meteorological forecasting, Disaster Warning systems, Education and Human Resource Development and Health care.

These call centers will act as a service provider to the PURA Nodal Knowledge Data Centres located in the PURA Complexes, which in turn will provide the area specific and customized knowledge to the Village Knowledge Centres in the villages in a holistic manner.

Conclusion

Technology is the instrument for providing non-linear growth to our economy. Hence PURA is driven by technology for sustainable rural development which will bridge the rural urban divide. Knowledge of technology is the means to lead to the generation of employment potential for realizing sustainable rural prosperity. This in turn will have a multilayered coordinated mechanism and system engineering of the existing units among the various domain service provider institutions, transmitting agencies, nodal agencies, village knowledge centres and the users.

It is a process to achieve the delivery of right knowledge, at the right place and at the right time to our rural population. Village Knowledge Centre is one of the essential component for realizing our goal of graduating into a knowledge society and lead to the transformation of the nation into a developed country before the year 2020.

As we all know, there have been many and many attempts across the country in taking ICT to rural areas with a view to provide sustainable and scalable development. But, each of the proponents of these efforts is passionately attached to the core idea and continues to pursue this even when it does not make any economic sense or when it is proven that they are not scalable or sustainable. Some of these efforts are successful only when centered on a creative leader. What we need now is a serious and an impartial review to decide on the best practices for nation wide deployment ? a best of breed solution for sustainable PURA. For this the role of the fellows of NVA and its leadership is important.

I would like to once again congratulate all the fellows, and my best wishes to all the participating agencies and the members of National Alliance in their Mission of realizing the Village Knowledge Centres as the frontline knowledge delivery systems in the villages.

May God Bless you.