 "Are The Govt.'s Village Wi-Fi Plans Shortsighted?")
It is always a disconcerting feeling when hearing news of the government proposing ambitious schemes where technology and the Indian hinterland are concerned.
A new plan under consideration by the Ministry of Rural Development would invest Rs.25,000 crore over ten years in order to provide high speed Wi-Fi connectivity to villages across India.
The proposal would be an amendment to the Department of Telecom’s National Optical Fiber Network (NOFN), which is aimed at connecting 250,000 villages via high-speed broadband. However, the Telecom Department’s own plan is running two years behind its original 2013 deadline schedule and has been budgeted at Rs.20,000 crore..
This new venture of the government towards providing wireless internet connectivity is another example of its technology inclusion policy that has been seen in projects such as AADHAR - the biometric universal identification plan, Aakash - the low cost tablet computer for enhancing rural education and other plans for internet mobile service to 25 million rural households.
All these attempts by the government to leverage technological tools for social welfare and digital inclusion have seen significant bumps along the way, with numerous delays in implementation and cost over runs.
The projected expense of the Wi-Fi plan is estimated to be split across the capital expenditure of Rs.3,900 crore and operational expenditure of Rs.2,060 crore per year over ten years. But typically, the funds are still a far cry from an assured resource and based only on bureaucratic estimations that will surely inflate as time goes on. The only assured finance is for the capital expense, sourced from the universal Service Obligation Fund, while the remainder has yet to gain parliamentary approval.
It seems the government is desperate in its attempt to use every internet enabling technology at hand, broadband, Wi-Fi and internet mobile devices, to ensure that the rural population is as much a part of the internet as the urban population.
And rightly so, since internet penetration in Indian villages is only 8 percent that of urban population with 90 percent of all rural areas disconnected. India as a whole ranks 49 out of 57 in developing countries with respect to availability of supportive Internet infrastructure and environment. And PC penetration of only 47 per 1000, which is significantly lower in comparison to similar nations such as Argentina, Mexico, Philippines and Vietnam. Even by 2015 the overall Internet penetration is only predicted to be 28 percent with rural penetration to be just 9 percent.
The public welfare offerings that hope to connect the nation via NOFN are still based on the broadband infrastructure with Wi-Fi routers providing only the last mile connectivity to villages. And even as the dominant form of communication shifts to mobile and tablet devices with an expected rise of 75 percent in mobile-tablet only users by 2015 the fragility of the Wi-Fi offering seems to be too short sighted a goal. The Indian hinterland still poses significant risk to any investment whether from theft and physical damage to the pitfalls of institutional corruption.
India as a nation of many paradoxes and may host Bangaluru as an international IT hub but with 70 percent of homes in rural India still struggling for electricity and a stable power supply, the efforts of the government seem superfluous and misdirected.
And although the need for complete internet inclusion has never been higher, since India has the third largest population in the world that is online, its 120 million online citizens are still decades behind other nations, with the rural part perhaps a generation behind, the sweeping methodology of government programs needs high scrutiny.
And although predictions are optimistic that the numbers will increase to 330 to 370 million by 2015 in Internet usage, the quality of the service is paramount if any real benefit is to judged. Its important to note that currently the average international bandwidth capacity per 10,000 people for nations similar to India is 28Mbps whereas Indian bandwidth capacity per 10,000 people is only between 6-8 Mbps.
The economic benefit from internet inclusion is also reflected in the GDP as it can double the economic contribution of the Internet from 1.6 percent at present to 2.8 to 3.3 percent by 2015, which is USD $30 billion today to nearly USD $100 billion in 2015.
It isn’t unfair to say that most large-scale government solutions do not have a stellar record when it comes to assuring quick and real benefit to citizens, often times taking years before they are able to see effective results through all the delays and bureaucratic loops. And in certain cases show a disregard for the ability for small scale solutions to emerge out of the people themselves.
Small-scale user intensive programs have shown great potential in India with initiatives such as HarVa, which has worked towards building digital inclusion through the setting up of rural BPOs and other skill building programs, that are essential in making the population digital literate. Another example are the internet hubs set up by ITC through out its agricultural properties in rural areas where villagers are able to use, learn and take advantage of PCs, printers and the Internet.
A self-sustained example of this pattern is the village of Punsari in Gujrat that was able to provide complete Wi-Fi support to its citizens with out any governmental assistance, by deploying its own resources in conjunction to already existing general welfare schemes. The village now has 24/7 Wi-Fi internet, CCTV security and solar powered lamps. It was able to make all these changes by autonomously using welfare funds in an agile and responsible manner.
There is no doubt that internet connectivity for the rural sections of India is a pressing necessity but the government should perhaps also consider allowing private-public partnerships take charge of how the technology is actually deployed, as well as the inputs of the final stakeholders – the people.