[Long] LINUX AND NONPROFITS: IT and Empowerment

[Frederick Noronha <fred@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Please check the comments on Linux below. Interesting... --Frederick.

----------  Forwarded Message  ----------
Subject: Article: IT and Empowerment
Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2000 12:51:32
From: "Madanmohan Rao" <madanr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>


Hi friends -

A warm hello again from Bangalore! An article I wrote on the recent "IT and
Empowerment" conference in Bangalore appears today on the INOMY.com site;
the full version appears below. Comments, feedback, etc. most welcome.
Happy reading!

 - madan

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>


Empowerment And Cyberspace: The Many Faces Of New Media

Madanmohan Rao reports from the "IT and Empowerment" conference in Bangalore
//www.INOMY.com//


Can the Internet help empower people - or does it actually reinforce
existing inequities in society? Can the non-profit, academic, government
and private sectors together address, analyse and assess the socio-economic
consequences of IT diffusion in urban and rural societies?

Close to a hundred delegates debated these issues in Bangalore recently at
the two-day conference provocatively titled "IT and Empowerment: The
Greater the Access, The More the Divide?" 

Hosted by Indian non-governmental organisations Madhyam
(madhyam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx), Voices (voices@xxxxxxxx), South Asia Media
Association, and the Delhi office of the German NGO Friedrich Eberhardt
Stiftung (www.fes.de), the event promises to become an annual affair to
broaden the scope of dialogue and action on the larger context of IT issues. 

Publishing of conference proceedings and online discussion will be
coordinated via a group of Web sites including Indian Webzine INOMY
(www.inomy.com). Earlier conferences in Bangalore - such as BangaloreIT.com
- have also addressed similar issues, and in 1998 the Bangalore Declaration
on IT in Developing Nations
(http://www.csa.iisc.ernet.in/bangit/bangdec/bangdec.html) was passed,
drawing attention to the opportunities and challenges of the Internet economy.

Plans to bridge the digital divide must address not just basic connectivity
issues, but also local content, affordable infrastructure, online/offline
discussion fora, sustainable business models, user-friendly interfaces,
multi-channel media synergies, local skillsets, and multi-sector cooperation. 

For instance, the Centre for Education and Documentation
(www.doc-centre.org) in Mumbai and Bangalore assists NGOs not just via
Internet access facilities but also workshops in Intranet management and
the use of freeware and shareware like Linux. 

"The Internet and Intranet are useful for furthering documentation and
information-linking activities as well as quick communication and
coordination among NGOs," said Shubha Chacko, an activist at CED.

"Our Indialink initiative helped link NGOs online and coordinate activism
around environmental, gender and nuclear energy issues," she said. 

Coordination of conferences via the Net has helped develop less of a local
bias and include more participation from different parts of the country,
she observed; for instance, conferences held in the capital city can become
less "Delhi-centric."

"We are strongly in favour of Linux. The basic open philosophy of Linux
resonates with the outlook of NGOs as well," Chacko observed. CED uses
freeware to manage document systems as well as email archives. 

Linux is good for low-budget organisations; it is very easy to get support
online from the Linux user community for problems you may encounter, Chacko
added. CED has been popularising Linux among NGOs via educational workshops
and demos.

Getting low cost software and content is also a concern for voluntary
training organisations like Each One, Teach One. Based in Bangalore, it has
10 computers for training underprivileged children.

Freeware and shareware can play a key role here as well, such as Linux,
Apache, Star Office, and iLeap (for Indian language tools). The
Mumbai-based site FreeOS.com is attempting to popularise local flavours of
Linux in India, among corporates as well as NGOs. 

Work is being done in India on visual (non-textual) interfaces to the Web,
as well as on translating content between English and various Indian
languages so as to bridge language and literacy gaps.

Non-resident Indians successful in Silicon Valley are plowing money and
expertise back into IT ventures in  their home country. For instance, B.V.
Jagadeesh, CTO of Web hosting pioneer Exodus Communications, has invested
angel funds in Bangalore-based iEnablers.net, which is launching a low cost
email reading device called iConnect.

"The future is in networking. NGOs need to actively work towards making
their voices heard in cyberspace," Chacko urged. 

"There is no doubt at all the Net has been invaluable in assisting
communities which are vulnerable and have been victimised," said Manchin
Hangzo, based at the Bangalore office of ActionAid (www.actionaidindia.org). 

"We found that AIDS patients were able to uncover a lot of useful
information online and get in touch with support groups via the Net. The
relative anonymity of the Net can also help rape victims come out and talk
about their problems and find help and resource organisations online," she
said. 

In addition to relief for such marginalised groups, the Net can also play
an important role in nurturing local communities, especially in rural
areas. Across the world, conferences like the recent Global Community
Networking summit in Barcelona (www.gcn2000.org) have focused on the
intersection between the global economy and local communities via
telecentres and community access points. 

"It is important for us to benchmark regional knowledge-driven
initiatives," said 
Aditya Dev Sood, a graduate student at the University of Chicago and
founder of the Bangalore Centre for Knowledge Societies (www.socsci.org).

Various hardware and mediation options are emerging for local Internet
access, said Sood, such as low-cost e-kiosks (or e-iosks) and simple
devices like loudspeakers to disseminate online messages. Loudspeakers are
used at the telecentres of the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation in
Pondicheery, south India, to broadcast downloaded weather alerts to
fishermen; other volunteer-driven services focus on education, health and
basic information services. 

Many rural telecentre initiatives like the Swaminathan project succeed in
bottom-up assessment of information needs, but have very high costs,
minimal returns, and long gestation periods. The Swaminathan project is
also difficult to scale up, hard to replicate in other regions, and
susceptible to political issues (such as caste conflicts), said Sood.

Effective rural IT projects will fall somewhere between these two ends of
the spectrum (kiosks and telecentres), according to Sood.

Other telecentre projects are emerging in Warana (Maharashtra), Madurai
(Tamil Nadu),  Dhar (Madhya Pradesh), and Bihar.

"In rural areas, it would appear that land-owning groups will be the first
to acquire and harness IT. The new entrants to the IT revolution will come
from this class," Sood said. Areas ripe for harnessing with rural IT
include teleworking and bio-technology projects.

Sood called for more consensus between NGOs, private and public sectors on
IT initiatives. "Many government projects are being undertaken in an
undemocratic and non-transparent manner, without full disclosure of details
or rationale," Sood observed.

The Right to Information Act, even when passed, must be implemented in full
spirit, he urged.

"While the state and corporate sector have begun working together to build
telecom infrastructure, these efforts will not significantly improve the
lives of rural citizen-consumers unless the NGO sector -- particularly
grass-roots NGOs -- begin addressing the challenge and possibilities of IT
and the Net," Sood said. 

"Given its mix of good IT skills and yet poor human development indices,
India has a lot of responsibility towards the rest of the developing world
in exploring such new IT frontiers," said Sood.

The Bellandur village administration (just outside Bangalore) is a good
example of a village which has computerised its operations, according to
Vinay Baindur of local NGO  CIVIC.

At a time when over 100 FM radio licenses have been issued in the country,
commercial and community radio can help overcome the "last mile" problem by
facilitating Internet access via facilities at the radio station. Elsewhere
in South Asia, a rural community initiative in Kothmale in Sri Lanka uses
community radio as a bridging device to facilitate online information flow
to rural communities; sites like InterWorldRadio.org also provide online
content for use by radio stations.

Bangalore-based media advocacy NGO Voices demonstrated a
radio-station-in-a-suitcase. "We must explore synergies between the Net and
community radio," urged Ashish Sen, director of Voices. 

Voices has been using this technology in its community radio training
initiatives in Kannakkapura in partnership with the Shree Ramanna
Makharishi Academy of the
Blind (SRMAB) and in Kolar in partnership with MYRADA. A community Net
programme is also planned for persons with disabilities in the Kannakkapura
area.

All those involved and affected by IT projects must critically question and
assess technology at each stage, said Deepa Krishnan, a consultant at Tata
Infotech (www.tatainfotech.com). 

"In many cases, existing stereotypes of learned behaviour - such as gender
attitudes - get carried over to the online medium as well. We should also
be careful of blindly following practices in other countries like the U.S.,
or of repeating some of the mistakes made with other media like radio and
TV," she said.

She also questioned whether the M.S. Swaminathan Foundation's telecentre
projects were sustainable, and whether they were really empowering the
local communities.

Resources for digitisation, data entry, computer literacy, and direct
access to technology (without interfering middlemen) can become key
concerns in rural IT, said Krishnan.

"It seems to be the case that you first need to create some social change
in order to let IT create further social change," Krishnan observed. 

"Empowerment means different things to different people, and one must be
careful with broad generalisations," she cautioned. Different technologies
have different strengths and weaknesses, and need to be harnessed
appropriately. 

"The Net can help NGOs in communicating across borders and time zones, and
also assist in coordinating projects. NGO Web sites can give their funders
direct access to accounting and activity information," said K. Gurumurthy,
consultant at e-finance services company iFlexSolutions.com (formerly
called CITIL).

Successful and timely project management for IT ventures will be key
concerns for NGOs, he said.

Everybody is entering villages today with computers - companies, government
agencies, research groups, and NGOs, observed Sunil Abraham of
Bangalore-based Web solutions firm IndiaCares.org, which designs Web sites
for NGOs free of cost. "But I don't think we should expect the Net to
overcome centuries of oppressive politics," he said.

"We should be looking at creating 'village Intranets' which leverage
systems like micro-credit and local online currencies to sustain the local
economy. National currencies like the rupee should be used only to
interface with the economy outside the village for e-commerce," Abraham
suggested.

Multiple banks and barter systems can also be set up for different
communities - like women, Dalits. This way, the village economy has a way
of shielding itself from the turbulence of global financial markets, he said.

Village Intranets can serve added functions via documenting the activity of
their elected officials, thus facilitating transparency and accountability.

While providing local training in IT skills will entail significant
resources, several experiments (like NIIT's observation of learned surfing
behaviour among slum kids) show that many of these skills can be refined
hands-on.

Device and costs need to come down; donations of older and used PCs by
Indian corporates and software companies could play a significant role
here. "Unfortunately, because of legal loopholes, the Software Technology
Parks of India are not allowed to donate their older machines to NGOs. This
needs to be changed," Abraham urged.

Organisations like WorldComputerExchange.org are playing a prominent role
in this regard, by re-circulating used PCs.

As for citizens' rights to information, the Net can be a democraticising
medium, said Bangalore-based advocate Lawrence Liang, who runs a law site
called IndiaLawInfo.com.

Numerous online initiatives around the world - in countries like Iceland,
Italy, Spain and Sweden -- are empowering citizens with access to basic
information about health, social amenities, and government policymaking.

On the flip side, e-surveillance by private and government agencies is also
increasing, Liang cautioned. 

Legislation like the IT Act 2000 and the upcoming Convergence Bill are
geared more towards e-commerce activities, and not towards social movements
or citizens rights.

"The IT Act 2000 requires a huge bureaucracy to support features like
digital certificates and digital signatures," Liang added.

Much hope has been raised over the potential of using the Net for distance
education in India. "But we must not assume that the more information we
have and the faster we can access it, the better it is," cautioned Veda
Mohan, manager at the SchoolNet project for networked learning
(www.schoolnetindia.com).

"We must creatively explore how the Net may assist the development of
multiple intelligencies in logic, language, spatial reasoning, art,
kinesthetics, and intra/inter personal areas," she said.

New kinds of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment will be required for
online learning, Mohan said. SchoolNet is currently working with ten
government schools on such initiatives.

 "We also need to harness Indian examples and contexts. For instance, the
art of kolam (rangoli) can be a good tool for teaching mathematical
concepts," she said.

SchoolNet designs XML-based course material (for Web and CD-ROM) in
conjunction with publishing houses like MacMillan and Oxford. 

Other notable NGO resources online include BytesForAll.org, Child Relief
and You (www.cry.org), CauseAnAffect.org, DigitalDivide.org, India Network
Foundation (www.indnet.org), and Jiva (www.jiva.org). 

But in many NGOs, there are people resistant to the introduction and
adoption of IT. "NGOs should remain dedicated to the issue of empowerment
by multiple means, and not act as new middlemen who deny their
constituencies the potential benefits of IT," cautioned Munira Sen of
Madhyam. 

NGOs must work towards giving people an informed choice with respect to new
media, she concluded.
 
>>>>>>>>>

The writer can be reached at madanr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
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