Why DigiGaon Programme Will Be A Game-Changer, Slowly But Surely

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had announced the DigiGaon programme in Union Budget 2017, saying: “A DigiGaon initiative will be launched to provide telemedicine, education and skills through digital technology. “The intention of the government was to smarten Indian villages through complete digital solutions - a total digital inclusion, which goes beyond digital payments and other piecemeal introduction of ICT-based services.”

It may just be time to speed up this initiative, as explained in the next section.

DigiGaon – The Panacea

With the US stepping up the heat on the visa front in the US, the return of thousands of Indians appears imminent sooner or later - maybe sooner, than later. The entry of these `newcomers’ will add to the population of our cities and towns, stressing the country’s facilities and resources. And it’s unlikely that this will happen without creating social and economic chaos - if we don’t plan for it, that is.

A wise way to offset this pressure is to offload them on our villages. This is where the DigiGaon initiative becomes the absolute need of the hour, and where the government needs to step up its efforts.

If looking the villages’ way requires another reason, the rising un-livability of our cities is one. A certain chart based on WHO figures – showing India’s 14 cities that form the world’s 20 most-polluted cities – has been doing the rounds in the form of news reports and studies, championing the cause of electric vehicles and clean energy. A close look at the chart reveals that it is not bigger cities that are the most polluted, but tier II and tier III cities like Agra, Lucknow, Gaya, Jaipur.

Such levels of air-borne toxins constitute high risk factors for conditions such as heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lung cancer and stroke; residents are already suffering, and require serious health solutions. The irony is that the very industries and other employment options these cities provide to rural people are the causes for pollution. In turn, the rising population increases vehicular traffic and other factors that contribute to pollution.

A situation is plausible, where owing to health and stress situations, more people will prefer to settle in the countryside: a reverse migration of sorts. But first, a basic ecosystem will need to be in place in villages that enables this. DigiGaons, thus, may be not just a luxury for the `poor deprived villagers’, but rather a crying need for all, including the affluent.

How far have we proceeded on this front?

The progress

Rural development news rarely makes for catchy headlines. Not much is known about the DigiGaon domain, apart from the knowledge that in May this year, Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad inaugurated Dhanauri Kalan in UP – one of the six pilot villages. Prasad had said then that 700 villages would be DigiGaons by the end of this year.

The facilitation of the process, through its contents – broadband connection, service centres (CSCs) and Wi-Fi-hotspots have all been progressing steadily.

The backbone – Bharat Net, the broadband connection programme, has made good progress under the National Democratic Alliance government. Announced in 2012, it had only been able to lay 350 km of OFC till 2014. Ultimately poised to bring broadband to over 2.5 lakh Indian villages through 145,000 gram panchayats (GPs), the current situation (as of 24 September) is as follows:

The mid-September tally of service-ready GPs across states shows that Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and Punjab are well-prepared, basics wise, for the revolution.

CSCs – Development Engines

Common Service Centres (CSCs) are special purpose vehicles through which voice and data, content and services – like banking, paying water, gas, electricity, DTH and mobile bills pensions, passports, and extended ones like education and telemedicine – will reach rural citizens. Village Level Entrepreneurs (VLEs) who operate the CSCs, are selected through an online application process, and must possess things like hard drives, UPS, generator set, digital camera, scanner, printer and minimum 128 kbps-speed internet connection.

CSCs have become de facto rural change agents in the socio-economic development agenda of the central government. Flavour of the month is, of course, their inclusion into the Jan Arogya Abhiyan; in July, Ayushman Bharat CEO, Indu Bhushan had signed an MoU with CEO, CSC-SPV, Dinesh Tyagi, for CSCs to help out with verification of beneficiaries who have Aadhaar cards. CSCs, once equipped with biometric facilities, would help in the implementation, and also create awareness about the scheme.

Unfortunately, the exact status and number of CSCs is not known. Even the MEITY website has dated data – as of 30 June, 2017 – on state/Union Territory-wise CSC rollout status.

There are assertions about the number of CSCs being close to 3 lakh, however, there are terminological differences regarding functional and functioning CSCs, and so we stick with the figure given by Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad – that CSCs were already working in 1.83 lakh gram panchayats.

From Twitter handles `CSCegov' and `CSCSPV_Health', and the CSC website, we get to know how the work undertaken by the VLEs – many of them women – ranges from organising health camps and robotics workshops and digital literacy classes, to distributing sanitary napkins among brick kiln workers and liaising with ASHA workers for different health outcomes.

Reportedly, some other notable activities include: partnering with Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) to facilitate online registration of students for courses; 40,000 CSCs have registered with Patanjali for medical tele-consultations with 800 ayurvedic practitioners; and Patanjali, fertiliser firm IFFCO, software company Tally Solutions and the Textiles Ministry have all shown interest to sell through CSCs.

The government is encouraging VLEs to perform through the lure of awards; one such incentive was that top five women entrepreneurs would be sent to Silicon Valley, based on the performance of their CSCs.

From the Twitter handles, we also figured that 80,000 Wi-Fi choupals already operate in 20,000 villages.

In spite of all this action, few villages have transformed into what can be called a DigiGaon. This is because the concept is about establishing complete, connected, villages – providing Wi-Fi hotspots, making government e-services available and providing digital literacy are all necessary, but not sufficient conditions.

The tenets of the DigiGaon initiative will be fulfilled when villages turn into self-sustaining units, with avenues for “rural entrepreneurship and building capacities and livelihood through community participation”. To this end, the Union ministry for Electronics and IT (MEITY), in its wisdom, has included, apart from Wi-Fi and CSCs, the following in the DigiGaon domain: solar lighting facility in the community centre, a LED assembly unit, a sanitary napkin unit with active participation by ASHA and anganwadi workers. Then the “Telemedicine, education and skills through digital technology” that will help address the three biggest, top-of-mind-recall deficiencies in rural India – good schools and teachers; lack of medical facilities and non-availability of doctors, and lack of employment which results in migration to bigger towns and cities.

This game-changer aspect, which is the original intent, is going slowly. In July, the twitter handles reveal that 15 villages in Bihar turned into DigiGaons. Recently, there was news about Union Minister Smriti Irani launching the DigiGaon initiative at Pindara Thakur village in Amethi district. Prasad has been interacting with top global executives and urging them to participate in this initiative. All said and done, the target of 700 DigiGaons by the end of the year will probably remain elusive. This is because converting each village, based on the government’s own definition, is a long process and one that will require private funds, expertise, enterprise and entrepreneurship. Also, basic things like power supply. The funds requirements, to begin with, are huge. Last year, the plans included rolling it out in three states as pilot projects and the outlay, including operations and maintenance, was Rs 423 crore.

The Potential

Still, instead of doing it all at one go, incremental changes to CSCs in the intended direction could yield the same benefits over a period of time. Synergies from existing programs can be utilised.

For instance, the 1.5 lakh wellness centres planned under the Ayushman Bharat programme for primary healthcare, could be extensions of the CSCs. CSCs already work with ASHA and anganwadi workers; the requirement of a doctor could be met through Telemedicine.

Parameters of neonatal health, MMR and IMR and others could be monitored by the Trinity of Tele-doctors, CSC/VLE, ASHA workers. With the right safeguards in place, even chronic care management can be done via internet and video interactions, besides apart from health-sustaining advice. Upgrade of skills and knowledge of rural healthcare workers could also be a constant process via ICT – and teams of skilled midwives, counsellors for chronic and lifestyle diseases can be created at the village levels.

Another important area can be the introduction of counsellors and therapists for psychological and mental health issues. This may to some extent prevent suicides in rural areas, of farmers, weavers and others.

Manpower shortages could be overcome by mandatorily involving students of medical colleges, both private and government in this; working with the CSCs can be given additional credits. This will ensure a continuous physical supply of doctors in villages.

In education, like the Ayushman Mitras, there could be a category of “Shiksha Mitras” helping out with education outcomes, and these could be resourced from the NSS (National Service Scheme), which works under the ministry of Youth Affairs. Millions of students enrolled under NSS participate in activities such as tree plantations and blood donation camps. They could be trained and incentivised to help in education – and like the National Policy on Education 1986 had suggested, they could be given extra credits for their social and rural work. Such active participation and involvement would add an important dimension to personalities of the youth.

Private sector participation would be needed in a big way. Union Minister Prasad has been holding meetings with top executives of the big IT firms “to consider the use of their innovative technology in the proposed DigiGaon ( Digital Village ) initiative”. Companies like TCS, Google and others have been enthusiastic at different points of time.

Nokia has gone a step further and taken the initiative to develop 500 villages as “Smartpurs”, with a tie-up with Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF), an NGO. Smartpur is a rural entrepreneurship-based model, again a pilot project, being implemented in villages Tain in Haryana and Asoor in Tamil Nadu which serve as hubs, to nine spoke villages. The idea is to integrate technology in existing practices and livelihoods: an example of this is DEF’s “DigiKargha”, where ICT is used to scale up skills, marketing and entrepreneurship of weavers. Such efforts can complement and supplement the government’s employment-generation endeavours of setting up LED manufacturing units and sanitary pads units. Whereas the latter have utility and therefore, assured markets, the former attempts to digitise existing means of livelihood in the community. Earlier, we mentioned how textiles ministry, IFFCO and others want to sell through CSCs; CSCs should also become centres through which village artisans’ products are marketed.

The Paradigm Shift

Many such initiatives are needed, with the telecom and IT sector, other private companies, NGOs, healthcare and education sector and students joining in as participants. Legislators need to take a cue from Smriti Irani and begin to take technology to the “last-person” in their respective constituencies.

Perhaps, for everyone it would help to view the process differently – instead of as `do-good ventures for poor country cousins’, something that may come to our aid in future, should the need arise. Finally, the central government could consider changing the oxymoron-ish nomenclature `DigiGaons’, to something like ‘Smart Villages’. That may just bring pace, private participation and a paradigm shift to this endeavour. Just a suggestion.