33Annual Report 2009-10

Community Informatics andDevelopmentOne of the central social processes in information society is of a technology mediatedreorganisation of our social relationships and structures in a manner that tends towards‘big systems’ rather than small. Economic globalisation is an early manifestation of thisprocess, but information society’s big system propensity goes much further into social,cultural and political aspects, increasingly taking control of our lives. It has, therefore,become imperative that advocates and agents of progressive social change operate attwo different levels. On the one hand, they need to invest in influencing the nature oftechnology models that underpin new macro possibilities, through an engagement withICT governance issues. On the other hand, it is equally important to directly contributetowards creating small counter systems at the peripheries that empower the local againstthe hegemonic global.

IT for Change’s Centre for Community Informatics and Development (CCID) in Mysoreworks with community based organisations involved with a range of developmentactivities, from women’s empowerment to livelihood issues. CCID’s activities are aimedat exploring how community development processes can be made participatory andeffective through new information and communication systems. We help our partnerorganisations experiment with uses of technology in their work, which can often havetransformative effects. The attempt is always to democratise the use of technologyamong field workers and community members, rather than developing specialised ICTunits to support development work. Knowledge gained from these experiments isploughed back as we work with more groups and organisations, and is also used foradvocacy towards community-centric and empowerment-oriented ICTD policies.

This year, we continued to undertake exciting work in the areas of community radio,community video and community computing in our main test bed among MahilaSamakhaya Karnataka’s (MSK), women’s collectives (sanghas) in Mysore district ofKarnataka state. In addition, we also trained Vikasana, an NGO working in the area oflivelihoods and gender, in making community radio programs. With the launch of theUNICEF supported project, Kishori Chitrapata (Images by adolescent girls), the year2009-10 marked the beginning of our work in the area of community informatics andeducation, through a focus on learning processes among out of schooladolescent girls.

Community Radio

Kelu Sakhi (Listen, O Friend!) continuedto be the ‘sangha radio’ over this yearand is now close to 200 weeklybroadcasts. These radio broadcasts enrichthe work of MSK among the sanghas and

at the village community level. Over theyear, two important campaigns weretaken up through Kelu Sakhi.

The first one was about the importanceof attending village assemblies, or thegram sabhas. In an eight week long

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campaign, the MSK and CCID team didfeatures on the ‘why and how’ of a gramsabha, the funds of a gram panchayat(the elected village government) andthe duties of elected representatives inthe gram panchayat. The sanghawomen spoke about their experiencesof participating in gram sabhas andgram panchayats, the hardships theyfaced and how they were able toovercome these.

This programme was very popular andhas had a significant impact. Therecordings of interviews with expertsregarding gram sabhas have beenreplayed by the MSK’s Cluster ResourcePersons (CRPs) through local audiosystems available at temples and othercommunity spaces. There appears tohave been an increase in enthusiasmamong community members to attendgram sabhas. In Jabagere village, forthe first time, women startedparticipating in the gram sabha afterlistening to radio programmes. Whenthe village leaders took a decision toallocate panchayat money for templerenovation, sangha women voiced theirdissent and ensured that the moneywas instead allocated towards housingfor the poor.

Another campaign was regarding grampanchayat elections. It was aimed atmotivating women to contest theelections and thus to increase women’sparticipation in local governance. MSKidentified interested women andconducted an orientation for them on theelectoral procedure. This included simpleas well as complex issues, from how tofill a nomination form to how not tosuccumb to political pressures. MSKwomen came on air and spoke about whythey had chosen to contest the elections,and the challenges they faced, includingthose presented by the family,community and officials. The CCID teamdid features on various topics showcasingwomen already in politics as well as thereservation policy for women in theseinstitutions and how the collectivestrength of sanghas can have greatsignificance vis-à-vis electoral outcomes.Eighty seven MSK women won the grampanchayat elections in Mysore districtthis year.

The impact of the Kelu Sakhi has spreadmuch beyond MSK sanghas. Men fromthe community have started calling in togive favourable feedback for theprogrammes, interestingly andsignificantly, identifying themselves inrelation to sangha women (for instance,men now introduce themselves as ‘I amthe husband of so and so sanghamember’). Women from many sanghasother than those organised by MSK havecalled to say how they find theprogramme highly useful and that thecollective listening of the programmes atsangha meetings is helping themorganise collective action. MSK is findingit much easier to start sanghas in newvillages where women are listening toKelu Sakhi. These women are morewilling and forthcoming to organiseinto sanghas.

Recording forKelu Sakhi, Hunsur

Taluk, Mysore District,Karnataka

ITfC focuses on socialprocesses, which isextremely critical forany long-terminvolvement with thecommunity. Their workfor the Mahiti Manthanaproject holds someimportant lessons onempoweringcommunities which isworth emulating byothers.

Amit Chakravarty, NationalInstitute of Smart

Government, Hyderabad,Andhra Pradesh

35Annual Report 2009-10

At CCID, there is a continuousendeavour to develop new andeffective techno-social tools andformats that are not resource intensiveand are suited to the specific contextof local communities. During this pastyear, each weekly programme was setin a different place with authentic liveaudio elements from the outdoor asbackground. The idea of such outdoorlive recording was to create mobility forthe anchor, as as well as to make theprogrammes richer in audio elements,both of which contributed to anincreased effectiveness of thebroadcast. Feedback for this format ishighly encouraging. Some popularoutdoor places and contexts includewomen compering from Mysore Dasara(an important local festival)exhibition, women gathered aroundcampfires during winter and women inhilly areas.

Long familiarity with broadcast has givena sense of ease and ownership to womenvis-à-vis Kelu Sakhi programmes. Womenare now much more comfortable to talkabout their real opinions and have alsostarted requesting for programmes to bemade at their sanghas. The Vox Pop slotis a newly designed format to go with theincreased ease and willingness of womento express themselves. We alsoexperimented with non-scriptedprogrammes. One such popularprogramme was about women giving apersonalised narrative of the history ofher village. Women introducedthemselves stating their name, villagename, family details, their reasons forbeing in the sangha, as well as anypersonal message they had to share withthe audience.

This year saw MSK take up much greaterownership of Kelu Sakhi. Apart fromintegrating the Kelu Sakhi programmesmore closely in their regular work, MSK’s

field staff have learnt to record and havestarted producing broadcast qualityprogrammes. MSK has constituted aninternal committee for Kelu Sakhi to takecare of all these aspects of the radioprogramme.

Over the year, the CCID team completedthe process of training and initial hand-holding for Vikasana, a grassroots NGObased in Mandya district, for developingtheir own community radio programmes.Vikasana is a 25-year old organisationworking in the area of watersheddevelopment, livelihoods, organicfarming, child labour, gender andeducation. The CCID team trained theVikasana team on recording, editing,scripting and on content management.Vikasana now has its own recordingteam, editing team, scripting team and acore management team that willsupervise their community radioactivities. They are well on their way tobuild the initial content bank before livebroadcasts of their programmes begin,which is expected to take place within afew months.

Community Video

MSK women continued to activelyparticipate in making and watchingvideos on issues that directly concernthem. A total of 16 videos were madeduring the year under review. Inaddition, many videos on varioussubjects developed by other agencieswere also used.

Mahila Samakhya Karnataka’s (MSK)field workers carry a set of videos withthem during their village visits. Thesevideos help support their agenda ofdiscussing important issues at sanghameetings. Sangha women organise theaudio-visual equipment from their ownhomes or from the village. They oftenrequest MSK workers for a repeat

Use of localinstruments and thelocal dialect is verygood. I like thisprogramme.

Rame Gouda,Government official from

Channarayapatna, HassanDistrict, Karnataka

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viewing of videos. Videos are are alsoscreened during block3 level meetingsorganised by MSK, where MSK personnelfacilitate discussions initiated around theissues presented in the videos. Sanghawomen organise community screenings ofvideos that they determine are importantfor the whole community. These screeningsare usually in the night, with a projector.The entire community gathers for thesescreenings, which often end with requestsfor more such screenings. Thesecommunity screenings help strengthen aleadership role for sangha women in thecommunity, which consequently hasobvious implications for gender relations.

After watching a video, a non-sanghavillager accessed a subsidy for setting upa flour mill from a governmentdepartment.

After watching a video on literacy, twowomen from Muskere village, joined aliteracy camp, learnt to read and writeand went for an evaluation. However,they did not pass the test. The womendid not give up, practised and clearedthe test the next time.

Women sangha members fromPeriyapatna Block went to thehorticulture department after watchinga video on the schemes of thedepartment and sought help for growingflowers. After learning about thepossibilities, they asked the villageelders to allot some village land to thesangha where they could grow flowers.

3 A block is an administrative unit consisting of a few scores of villages.

Watching a videomakes it easier to talkabout issues

Hema, Attiguppe village,Hunsur Taluk, Karnataka

Some positive outcomes from the community video

The impact of community videos isgrowing and reaching beyond the localcommunity. Many governmentdepartments are beginning to see thatlocally made videos providing relevantinformation about their work helps themfunction better in serving the community.Popularity of videos made on the role andwork of some departments is acting asboth a pressure and an incentive forother departments who were initiallymore reluctant in this regard. Men fromthe village have even started toparticipate in viewing videos at sanghameetings and also share their opinionsconcerning various issues. Screening of

In K.R. Nagara block, womenwatched the ‘Bank and Sangha’video whereby they were able toaccess bank loans without anyassistance from MSK personnel.

After watching the video about KeluSakhi, two women from Melurvillage belonging to an oldergeneration, bought a radio toenable collective listening.

A girl who had dropped out ofschool from Somnalli watched avideo about the importance of theeducation of the girl child and thefacilities available through SarvaShiksha Abhiyan, and decided to goback to school. This video has alsohelped the MSK staff in their schoolenrolment campaign.

37Annual Report 2009-10

goes from house to house and inquiresabout the kind of information neededby the community. She also shares herknowledge about governmentdepartments and other usefulinformation. The requests forinformation have ranged from ‘how toget a bus pass’ to ‘how to get jobs forour children’. Requests for agriculturerelated information, pertaining toseeds, saplings, free manure andsubsidised ploughs, pumps, motors andsprinkler pipes are very common. Theproactive engagement of the Sakhioften draws the interest of villagers andthey follow up for more informationregarding different agencies by visitingthe NMKs. Apart from providing therequired information, the Sakhi alsohelps villagers apply for entitlementslike old age pension, widow pension,disability pension etc., and assists inprocessing applications.

The NMK and Block level (a sub-districtunit) Sakhis work in tandem. The Blocklevel Sakhi is the principal conduit togovernment departments and otheragencies like banks. Sangha women fromNMK villages have slowly begun to assertcomplete control and ownership of NMKactivities. They pool in the money earnedfrom NMKs, through revenue-generatingactivities like computer education, digitalphotography, data entry etc, into a corpuscalled the ‘Bhavishya Nidhi’ (future fund).Sangha women are increasinglyconfident of running NMKs on their own.They are reaching out to nearby villages,spreading information about the centreas well as coaxing people to give theirphoto/video orders to the centre, so thatit can keep earning some revenue. Theyare also taking up many new community-oriented activities which can benefit thelocal community while strengtheningtheir sangha.

videos has started to attract women tocluster meetings (involving a couple ofadjacent villages) and thus enabling MSKfield workers to hold such meetings muchmore regularly.

Community Computing

During the year under review, the CCIDteam worked with three village levelcommunity telecentres that the sanghawomen refer to as Namma MahitiKendras, (Our Information Centres), atAttiguppe, Hosavaranchi and Bannikuppevillages, and two block level centres atHunsur and H.D. Kote.

Namma Mahiti Kendras (NMKs) havesteadily come to have a strong influenceon the information and communicationarchitecture of the local villagecommunity (the local communityinformatics). Sangha women from thevillage level NMKs have started tobecome much more active in communityactivities, because of their widelyacknowledged leadership in communityinformational matters as well as linkageswith government departments.

Some of the areas where sangha womenhave shown increased participation isconcerning the gram panchayat, theschool development and monitoringcommittee, the anganwadi (villagecreche) monitoring committee and thevillage hygiene and health committee.

Each NMK covers five to six surroundingvillages. A village information worker,called Sakhi (friend), manages each NMK,while a management committeeconsisting of sangha women and fewother village leaders provides overalldirection. The Sakhi visits all the villagescovered by an NMK. She sharesinformation about services available atthe NMK with the community. The Sakhi

We have been veryimpressed at how youuse information tohelp citizens and holdthe governmentaccountable. Wewish you successin the future.

Steven Solnick,Representative of Ford

Foundation, New Delhi

I tried three or fourtimes to get myself acertificate and avail ofthe disability pensionbut I was not able toget it. Now because ofyou (NMK Sakhi), I amgetting Rs. 1,000 everymonth. I will neverforget you.

Puttamma, Physicallychallenged woman,

Somanalli, Mysore District,Karnataka

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Attiguppe NMK women organised a bloodcheck up for all women at the village NMK.Some women from this NMK plan to buy atractor at subsidised rates, through agovernment scheme and rent it to thecommunity members especially to smalland marginal farmers who are unable toafford renting tractors at the going marketprice. In Hosavaranchi, the NMKaccommodated a group of women builderswho stayed in the centre and built toiletsfor the the entire residential area of adisadvantaged caste.

As sangha women are now able to guidecommunity members regardinggovernment information, entitlementsand other schemes, this has meant a lotfor their status in the community.Villagers, including men, are often foundapproaching sangha women for variouskinds of information. Sangha women arenow much more sought after for a largerrole in community activities. On the otherhand, as they have become more activein leadership roles in the village, sanghawomen have also grown more aware ofsocial inequities and injustices andare trying to bridge the gap throughtheir endeavours.

Community Informatics andEducation

CCID began a new project, KishoriChitrapata (images by adolescent girls)this year to address the learning needsof out of school adolescent girls orkishoris. This project is being done inpartnership with MSK, UNICEF and SarvaShiksha Abhiyan4, Karnataka. The projectexplores the innovative uses of video,radio and computing technology forconstructivist learning by these younggirls. The girls explore their natural andsocial ecologies through this technology.This process helps them develop self-confidence, a spirit of enquiry, criticalthinking and reflection. It opens up newprocesses as well as avenues of learningfor them through relating critically to theirimmediate environment. The project alsoaims to help kishoris develop radio andvideo programmes about importantcommunity issues, which are thenpresented to the community for theirreflection. This process is likely to createa new empowering role and position forthese young girls, who otherwise live onthe periphery of the community.

Adolescent girls constitute a highlysensitive group in the village. Most issuesconcerning adolescence, especially thoserelated to girls, whether they are of bodilychanges, sexuality and personalrelationships or about their own choicesregarding education, career and marriage,never find space in public dialogue. Thisproject seeks to develop such spaces usingICTs, which can nurture the journey of thishighly disempowered group towardsempowerment, in small but sure steps,while also taking the community along.Community involvement has been seenas key to bring kishoris out of theirhomes, the space in which they mostlyremain confined.

4 Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan is India’s flagship nationwide education program.

Handycam training,Kishori Chitrapataproject, Attiguppe

Village, Hunsur Taluk,Mysore District,

Karnataka

Extremely goodinitiative. Good toknow that women ofthe region are utilisingthe benefits of thisprogramme to themaximum. Suchinitiatives definitelyhelp in the upliftmentand empowerment ofthe community.Wishing theprogramme good luck,God bless.

Dr. Ratan Kelkar, Director,Kerala IT mission

39Annual Report 2009-10

The first stage of the project is beingimplemented at two villages, Attiguppe andHosavaranchi, of Hunsur Block in Mysore.Both these villages have communitytelecentres or NMKs. The sangha women ofthe village and the NMK Sakhi constitutecrucial support structures for theimplementation of the project.

Most of the CCID team needed to beoriented afresh as trainers for all threekinds of technology – video, radio andcomputers – that are being used in theproject. Sangha women were given anorientation session to act as a supportgroup for the project. We engaged parentsof the girls in repeated conversations toexplain why their daughters shouldparticipate in the programme, allayingtheir misgivings in this regard. It wasequally important to gain the support ofvillage elders because projects involvingadolescent girls carry many social risks.

A full scale curriculum was developed forthe education of the girls in a participatorymanner, involving the girls, sangha womenand MSK staff, thus practicing aconstructivist approach to education. Theissues chosen range from life skills toreproductive health, gender, dowry,alcoholism, basic science, agriculture andgovernment programmes.

Activities at Hosavaranchi Village

In Hosavaranchi, Kishoris readily agreedto video shoot the process of door-to-door visits by the NMK Sakhi for thecollection of various informational needs.Traditionally, upper caste areas of thevillage have been out of bounds fordisadvantaged castes. When kishoris ofdisadvantaged castes visited dominantcaste areas with a video camera, curiousquestions were asked about whosedaughters they were and what is thatthey were doing with the camera.Dominant caste members, however,

supported the process; they even agreedto let kishoris eat the fruit from theirtrees. After the visit, kishoris said that itwas the first time they saw how big theirvillage was and who all lived in it.

The kishoris themselves prepared thequestionnaire for the video shoot, startingfrom basic questions like ‘what isinformation’. The framing of such questionsand posing them has been an extraordinaryexperience; it has helped kishoris who haddropped out of school develop confidenceand the faculties of critical thinking andinquiry as perhaps no formal system ofeducation could provided.

When the gram panchayat elections wereround the corner, kishoris organised a videoshoot around the elections. They preparedquestions and interviewed sangha women.The following are some of the commentsmade by the kishoris after the interviews:

- ‘I did not know that there weredifferent types of electionshappening, I thought once in 5 yearspeople gathered at the school to votefor the government’

- ‘I have never voted though I am olderthan 18 years’

- ‘Gram panchayat elections are soimportant’

Digicam training,Kishori Chitrapataproject, HosavaranchiVillage, Hunsur Taluk,Mysore District,Karnataka

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Another topic they chose to make a videoon was ‘the importance of forests’. Theyhad heard from their elders that there usedto be a forest on the outskirts of theirvillage and that it was cleared a fewdecades ago. Their initial objective was tobring out the message that it is good topreserve trees and forests. During thecourse of the interview, however, theylearnt that elephants from the forestfrequently damaged the crops and hadeven mauled some people. This was thereason why the village community haddecided to clear the forest. This pushed thekishoris to think critically and they realisedthat there are no easy answers to manysocial, ecological and political questions intheir specific manifestations.

Activities at Attiguppe Village

In Attigupe, when kishoris were learningabout the concept of ambient light whiletaking still pictures on the camera, one ofthe exercises given to them was tophotograph a petty shop. However, it sohappened that the only petty shop in thevillage was closed that day. A malecommunity member, who saw the kishorisreturning disappointed because the pettyshop was closed, suggested that theycould take photographs of his shopinstead. His was a barber’s shop, averitable male domain. For the first time,women entered a completely male spacein the village. This became possiblebecause they had a digital camera intheir hands.

Initially, kishoris refused to go out forsuch outdoor exercises because theywere shy and apprehensive about thereactions of adult men and women inthe vil lage. They were painfullyconscious of the social norms thatrestricted their mobility. After a fewpositive and empowering experiences,kishoris now readily take to the village

Those who havecompleted theirstudies are like this(confident). I feelhappy that with thistraining I am able toreach the level (ofconfidence) that isusually possessed bythose who havestudied. In fact, I feel Iknow more than that.

Asha, a Kishori, whodropped out of school and

later joined the KishoriChitrapata project, sending

a message throughcommunity video to

other Kishoris,Hosavaranchi Village,

H.D. Kote Taluk, Karnataka

streets, planning and completing theiroutdoor assignments themselves. Theyknow that when they face anyproblems, they have sangha women toturn to for counsel and support.

Kishoris now move around freely in theirvillage. The community knows about theirwork and appreciates it. Villagers pitchin to support by posing for photographs,by participating in interviews andby making themselves availablefor video shoots etc. Communityacknowledgement and tacit consent hasserved to legitimise the new foundmobility and learning avenues forthe kishoris.

Looking Ahead

There has been a drying up of funding inthe ICTD area which has been almost asrapid as the advent and rise of ICTD fundingin the early years of this decade. ICTD didlargely fail in its promise because of thecertain distance that this new field has keptfrom the more traditional precepts andpractices of development. The currentthinking in donor circles is that it is best todirectly fund ICT related activity within, andas a part of, project funding in differentsectors like governance, gender, education,health etc. However, it it our experiencethat a specialised agency is needed, whichcan evangelise ICT possibilities in thedevelopment field and build capacity aswell as do some hand holding fordevelopment agencies working in differentsectors. It is important to create newinformational cultures that enable greaterempowerment of the local community,challenging the influences of the global thatrender powerless, the local, and alsodismantle exploitative social structures thatkeep some sections of society in perpetualdisadvantage. Getting funding support fora CCID focussed kind of agency is difficult,and though we do get funds for specific

41Annual Report 2009-10

areas like gender, education andgovernance, some committed core fundingfor CCID is needed for us to work withgreater confidence to meet its objectivesas a resource group for a range ofdevelopment activities.

We plan to extend the Kishori Chitrapataproject to two large-scale governmentinitiatives that seek to incorporate girlswho have dropped out of school back intothe school system, through residentialschools. These two initiatives are theMahila Shikshana Kendra of MSK, and theKasturba Gandhi Balika Vasathi Kendra ofthe Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan of theGovernment of Karnataka. Both theseinitiatives provide residential schools tohelp girls from disadvantaged sectionscontinue in the formal education system.In these initiatives the Kishori Chitrapataproject will be part of the formalclassroom based education process.Therefore, the project will adapt to thissituation. The curriculum and pedagogicalprocesses will integrate into the school’sregular activities. The opportunity is todemonstrate how ICTs can be used as partof the formal educational process toemploy local content in a constructivistmanner to enhance learning outcomes.Since a lot of ICTs in schools programmesare being designed currently, there is a

good advocacy opportunity through thisproject, especially since we are alsoworking along with governmenteducation programmes.

IT for Change is planning to start a newfield project, Khuli Panchayat (open localself-governance system), next year,through CCID. This proposed project willlook at new community informaticsprocesses that can deepen democracy atthe local level and increase the localcommunity’s engagement with variousgovernance processes as well aswith specific government programmeslike the Rural Health Missionand the National Rural EmploymentGuarantee Programme.

Signs of change

Parents of Kishoris and the husband of one married kishori spokefor a video which showcased the learning gains kishoris weremaking through the Kishori Chitrapata project. They mentionedhow these girls were benefitting from this training and urgedother parents not to hesitate in allowing their daughters toparticipate and gain from it.

A majority of the kishoris in the project are now able to negotiatewith their elders for the postponement of marriage for uptotwo years. All kishoris also articulated the desire to take upemployment before they got married. The mother of one kishorisaid that she is willing to send her daughter to work as it isgood for her. She had seen NMK sakhi work and saw it as anopportunity to earn for the family. This statement, coming froma mother who had earlier pulled her daughter out of school,carries weight.