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| Tuesday, 3 February 2004 |
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'Desheeya Gnana Kendras': Taking ICT to the farmers and fishermen by Chanuka Wattegama Even after its engagement with a successful experiment of open economic policies for twenty-five long years, agriculture still remains a key economic sector in Sri Lanka. According to the Central Bank Annual Report for the year 2002, agriculture (including fisheries and forestry) still constitutes 20 per cent of the GDP and employs more then one third of the total workforce. Possibly the situation might change later, but as of now, it is an area the policy makers, under any regime, cannot afford to overlook. In these circumstances, it is quite surprising that agriculture is an area where the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) usage is still minimal. Agricultural communities, largely rural, have hardly heard about computers. The farmers (fishermen too included) usually work within their own closed environments, without any interaction with the outer world, except for their infrequent interface with the field officers. These circumstances are effectively exploited by the middlemen to maximise their own profits offering the bare minimum to the farmers. The mango that is sold for a price of Rs. 20 in Colombo might fetch only Rs. 4 or less for the producer. The balance, far above the aggregate of the handling and transport charges is the profit margin of the middleman. The producer might be well aware of this exploitation, but there is little he can do against that, even as a collective force. Firstly, the agricultural and fisheries products should be consumed within a given period, and no storage facilities are available at the village level. About the prices Secondly, the farmers have only a vague idea about the prices, at the time they harvest. Probably the decision to harvest is taken on a market price of a previous day, which have changed to their disadvantage when the products reach the exchange point. Probably, another exchange point offers a better market price, but since he is not aware of that, the farmer settles for a price far below the production cost itself. The permutations are endless, as the range of information dissymmetry is large and almost always to the disadvantage of the farmer (or fishermen). This issue has been pointed out numerous times earlier, but a solution has not yet materialised. The bottleneck is to ensure the information symmetry to create a perfect market. It is not an easy task to attain information symmetry in a rural area due to communication barriers exist in such societies, either financial or technological. Traditional communication channels have already failed in achieving it. The only two avenues so far not experimented are the ICTs and community radio. This article focuses on the former, and illustrates how ICTs can be effectively used in the rural communities, whether agricultural or fishing, to uplift the life standards of the inhabitants. The concept is to introduce district wide information centres with nodes at each village. To account for minor differences to the parallel systems tried in other countries in the region, this particular concept has been named as the "Desheeya Gnana Kendra" or DGK system. Global knowledge centres The beauty of this concept is that is directly derives from the Vishva Gnana Kendra (VGK) model currently being implemented island-wide by the Ministry of Science and Technology. The appropriate name of that programme comes from Dr. Harsha De Silva. According to the ICT Agency, which plays the key role in setting them up, VGKs, meaning global knowledge centres, are multi-service community information centres, which provide access to Internet, telephone and other information services and content to the public in rural communities. In other words, these information centres will make the vast information resources available through Internet at the village level. The first VGK has already been established at Embilipitiya and in the first phase, it is estimated that around 100 VGKs will be created in the North, East and South of the country by the end of 2004. Interestingly, the same communication infrastructure can be used to provide services that go much beyond that. The key here is the content. What sort of global or 'vishva' information the villagers need? Do they want to purchase rare books from Amazon dot com? Are they interested in visiting the web sites of CNN, BBC or Reuters for international news? Do they need to learn about the international level buyers for their products? Possibly they might need all these at a later date, but the need of the hour is few pieces of information more local. A reliable information about a good pesticide or a fertiliser might be more important to the villagers in Kebithigollewa that the latest details of the regional financial markets. That is why the same communication centres should be used to deliver this type of "Desheeya" (local or localised) information. Internet Unfortunately such "Desheeya" information is not available in the Internet right at this moment. It might have the stock price of the CSE, but definitely not the ongoing market prices of tomatoes or pumpkins at the Dambulla market. By the definition itself, the Desheeya Gnana Kendra (DGK) system is a one, which will provide such vital but currently non-available information to rural communities. The content as illustrated later, should be exclusively local; or 'Desheeya' - there is nothing global about them. Therefore, it is no way an alternative to the VGK programme. It is just another parallel initiative, which uses the same infrastructure to achieve an entirely different but perhaps more important and more relevant information at the grass root level. For the smooth functioning of the DGK system, it is essential to select a network, which can host it. Here again we have two choices. A fresh network can be formed but to use an already existing network might be the more efficient, more economical and perhaps the faster option. Fortunately such a well-established administrative network already exists in Sri Lanka. It is a hierarchal network, the effectiveness of which have been time tested for decades if not centuries. The top layer of this network consists of the District Secretaries. Then come the Divisional Secretaries and the ground level is represented by the Grama Niladharis of each village. Interestingly, this network already covers all the citizens of this country and only a minimal effort is required to use the same to convert them to the so-called "netizens". The central point of the information network can be the office of the District Secretary. (Of course, the systems at different District Secretariats can be interlinked for information sharing.) The district centre will also work as the intersection point between the national information systems and the district level information system. The information flow is obviously two way, information coming from the national level and going to the rural communities and vice versa. The Divisional Secretaries, the next layer in the DGK system, have the responsibility of information dissemination within their divisions. The best ways and means how this should be done can be decided at the discretion of the Divisional Secretaries, as the situation everywhere might not be identical. They, with the help of the Grama Niladharis will also take the responsibility of introducing new information to the system, to be used at the district, provincial as well as the national level. Therefore, it is evident that each Divisional Secretary has to play a key role to make the project successful. This creates several job opportunities at the Divisional level and can be filled by the currently under employed graduates with minimal training. Village representatives The lowest but definitely the most significant layer is the villages. Each village must select its own representatives who should form a key part in the implementation of the project. Initially the Grama Niladhari can act as the village representative, but considering the other responsibilities he had to shoulder, it is recommended that this responsibility should be passed on to other representatives of the village, instead of the Grama Niladharis. The following can be some of the direct benefits obtained from such a system. 1. Providing timely and accurate market information to the farmers (fishermen). If the accurate market prices at different collection centres are available at their end, the farmers can take effective decisions what to grow and when to harvest. The DGK system can timely and regularly disseminate the market information at the village level. (The fishermen might be interested in weather information). 2. Providing agriculture related information to farmers DGK system can present the agriculture related information such as the categories of the crops to be cultivated, instructions on how to grow selected crops, information on pesticides etc. to the farmers in an eye-catching manner. Probably they might be receiving the same information today by other sources, such as field officers, but the injection of ICT to the process can make the same information more reliable, faster and updated. 3. Addressing the financial needs of the farmer community with the help of banks and financial organisations. In spite of the development taken place in the local banking and financial sector during the past few decades, the rural banking sector still uses ICT at the bare minimum level. Not all rural development banks use computers. Even the automated ones are not interconnected and work on stand-alone mode. Compared to the speedy and effective service received by their urban counterparts, as a result of automation, the rural population does not receive anything financial services worthwhile mentioning. The DGK system can address the financial needs in two ways. In one way, the information network can be successfully used to deliver information about credit sources etc. to the farmer community. Secondly, the DGK network can be effectively used to provide the transaction facilities to them with the help of the commercial, development and rural banks. This does not pose any additional overheads on the banks, as the solution is expected to be operated from the village end, by the village representatives, whom can be outsourced by the banks. However, with the practical difficulties the initial phase can aim only to achieve the goal of information presentation. The transaction level solution should be introduced at a later stage, but it can utilise the same infrastructure. 4. Effective natural resource management by the introduction of computer based Natural Resource Management techniques. The natural resource management of many areas of the country still remains low. This can be partially due to the difficulties in obtaining all the information about the natural resources in a single Management Information System (MIS). A DGK system can build a database on natural resources of the district to address this issue. It will act as the initial step towards building and effective and efficient MIS system for a district. 5. Dissemination of Health and Educationally important information The key problem in using the conventional media (newspapers, government notices etc.) to disseminate health and educational information is that all of them are essentially one-way channels. There can also be delays in communication and difficulties in addressing a large section of the population within a short period of time. The introduction of a DGK system will address this issue by effectively disseminating health and educational information to the public within a short period of time. [email protected] |
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