Telecentres: Where do we go from here?

Subbiah ArunachalamCentre for Internet and Society

Bangalore, India

1. Can telecentres empower people, help include the excluded and reach the unreached?

It is knowledge appropriate to a given context that can

empower people and facilitate greater inclusiveness.

Telecentres are a mere means of reaching knowledge to

the communities.

2. Then why do people promote telecentres when other means of disseminating knowledge is already in place and serving the communities reasonably well?

Yes, traditionally schools, colleges and universities have

served as centres of learning. Public libraries are another

form of a learning source. But these cannot reach the poor,

the marginalized and the disempowered with the kind of

information/knowledge that can lead them out of poverty.

They are not designed to do that.

That is where community telecentres come in.

Unlike educational institutions and public libraries,

telecentres can handle a person’s context. The

success of a community telecentre depends on

how well they can deal with an individual’s need for

information.

3. Why have telecentres not achieved as much as one would expect them to?

Telecentres have been around for nearly two decades. But

a number of them focus on the technology and providing

access to technology. Such centres would at best be

marginally better than Internet cafes. People and their

information needs must be the focus. Technology is merely

the means to deliver the information. We need it because it

can help gather, process and deliver information quickly.

[Actually, it can do much more]. Once the information

needs of the community are assessed, and they can

change over time, one needs to find the content that can

satisfy those needs.

Telecentres need to work with strategic and boundary

partners both to assess the information needs and to

obtain the information. These partners will include experts

from agricultural and veterinary universities, research

laboratories, and government departments, doctors and

public health officials, agricultural extension officers, banks,

insurance companies, enterprise institutions, fisheries

experts, and so on. A lot of building partnerships and

sharing knowledge. Hard work indeed. No wonder there

have been many stories of failed initiatives.

The emphasis is on knowledge to be delivered. That is

why we call MSSRF telecentres village knowledge centres.

4. What role does technology play?

The emphasis on digital inclusion is probably a bit

misinformed. The emphasis should be on knowledge

inclusion and empowerment to facilitate livelihood

opportunities. That is not to discount the importance of

technology. When large parts of the world was going

through famine and hunger it was knowledge of biology

and crop science that brought about the Green Revolution

and saved the lives of many. The same way, the

information and communication technologies must be

harnessed to the advantage of all and not just a selected

few.

Different technologies – computers, Internet, cell phones,

satellites, to name only a few - have been used in

development initiatives. And technologies are converging,

their capabilities are increasing and costs are coming down.

And yet traditional technologies have not lost their rightful

place. In one of the major success stories in India MSSRF

Uses Internet and the public address system in tandem.

Horses for courses, as they say. It is not the newness of a

technology which matters. What matters is which technology

is appropriate to a given situation or context.

5. What about different kinds of telecentres?

Depending on who we want to reach, we can choose the

model. If we want to reach the really poor, we can go in for

the community telecentre model with some external financial

support. If we want to reach a predominantly agricultural/

farming community, one can use pay-per-use arrangement.

If the goal is to facilitate transactions with the government

(e-governance), one can use again the pay-per-use model.

Fee-based or free, the goal must be to provide maximum

satisfaction to the user community.

6. What is the role of the government?

Governments can formulate policies and legal framework

that would facilitate the functioning of telecentres, as a

public good initiative. In India, the government has provided

free access to satellite transponders for telecentres. The

only country to have done that. The government has also

come forward in scaling up the existing initiatives; it is setting

up more than 100,000 telecentres within the next few years.

The Right to Information Act is another step taken by the

Government of India that can help promote transparency

and democracy.

Should telecentres be financially sustainable?

Not necessarily. Every society – both individuals and

governments – subsidizes health care, education, the arts,

libraries and sports. Often the beneficiaries of these

subsidies are people who belong to the middle class. And

we should not shirk from our responsibility to support the

rural poor and the disempowered. Besides, the social good

that can result from well-run community telecentres far

outweigh the financial costs.