India Rural UP on verge of a cyber boom

Arvind Singh Bisht
[ Friday, April 14, 2006 01:47:11 amTIMES NEWS NETWORK ]

LUCKNOW: Now it is time for a cyber boom in rural Uttar Pradesh. If the state government's ambitious project for internet expansion with the held of private entrepreneurs takes off, around 50,000 villages will be able to log on to web by the end of this year. The project, conceived on the guidelines of the Central government, is aimed at bridging the digital divide by setting up rural internet kiosks (RIK) with private participation. Disclosing this, principal secretary, information technology, Zohra Chatterjee said: "The plan is being formulated for setting up common services centre (CSC) with private participation." Initially 16,424 CSCs would be set up and each one will cover six villages. Rural kiosks called village level enterprises (VLEs) will be set up in the connected villages. These VLEs will be charged monthly fee by the CSCs. This way the entire rural area of the state will be covered in the next two years. A kiosk in this scheme is much more than merely a cyber cafe. In fact, they will provide data-driven services, computer education and also function as a digital photo studio. In addition to this, subscription-based information services will also be provided by these kiosks with regard to specific queries about health, telemedicines, insurance policies, agri-data, matrimonial, astrology, citizen services, animal husbandry, environment, tourism, utility services, education and land and property, besides a host of other things.
As for the availability of the broadband connectivity throughout the state for this purpose, Chatterjee said that a Rs 165 crore project to erect state wide area network (SWAN) was being currently implemented in the state with the help of the National Informatics Centre (NIC). "We expect that by the end of this year, the network would be ready to cover half of the total villages in the state. While the major investment on setting up the CSCs will be borne by the private parties, the state will allow them to use its SWAN free of cost for five years. On an average, the total cost of the setting up a kiosk is estimated to be around Rs 90,000 to Rs 1 lakh. A major chunk of it is to be borne by the kiosk entrepreneur, who primarily will be a resident of the concerned village. The host company will share the remaining cost, which later would be recovered through a franchise fee and network fee from the service providers.
A well-operated kiosk, says Zohra Chatterjee will benefit all concerned. While private agencies make profit by franchising rural kiosks, the entrepreneur or the kiosk operator, will gain from a regular inflow of an average Rs 5,000 to Rs 7,000 per month.