1.2 - G. Designing e-government for the poor

The presentation by Mr. Madaswamy Moni, the Deputy Director General, National Informatics Centre, Department of Information Technology, India, focused on the Government of India's digital initiatives and agenda for small and marginalized farmers. Mr. Moni said efforts to reduce poverty were stalling, and the gap between the rich and the poor was widening. Further, international efforts to improve information flows and communication services could help to eliminate poverty, but it alone would not solve the problem.

Models of e-government were continuously evolving and improvising to harness the potential offered by ICT and deal with new realities in the area of governance. In the design of e-government, ESCAP's Committee on Poverty Reduction emphasized 'fostering the development of sustainable and affordable information and communication technology focused on the needs of the poor'. Agriculture, medicine and ICT were three fields where the diffusion of technology held particular promise for the poor. Such fusion of technology for stimulating growth in rural areas was needed. So too was a locationspecific e-government model, which could reach the rural poor.

Mr. Moni said the rural poor were not a homogeneous group. Poverty had multiple and complex causes, which were mutually reinforcing. If poverty was to be reduced, a flourishing agricultural sector was essential. Reaching the rural poor made broad-based economic growth its primary objective, and treated agriculture as the leading productive sector within the rural economy and closely linked to non-farm activities. Non-farm activities, often with linkages to agriculture and natural resources, had important multiplier effects. Rural poverty reduction required multi-faceted policy efforts that recognized the linkages among household asset access portfolios, household income strategies and macrostructural changes.

There have been both national and international efforts, including the ESCAP Committee on Poverty Reduction, the Millennium Development Goals and the World Bank's PovertyNet to improve information flows and communication services to eliminate poverty, which were necessary, but not sufficient conditions. In poor rural areas, where agricultural productivity was low and unreliable and there was food insecurity, better information and knowledge-exchange was important in reducing poverty. India’s e-government agenda was to set up agriculture information centres in every village. That would encourage interactive exchange of information for planning and day-today operations of farmers. As part of its digital agenda, the Government had a number of initiatives. Those included the following:

• AGMARKNET, a road map to network 7,000 agricultural produce wholesale markets and 32,000 rural markets
• AGRISNET (Agricultural Resources Information System) which would use an optical fibre network to provide agricultural extension services and agribusiness activities

For the introduction of "agricultural governance" in the country, the establishment of AGRISNET as the national information infrastructure was emerging as a prerequisite. AGRISNET would provide content on water, soil, climate and capital resources, land records, environmental data, and plant, animal and fisheries resources, as well as remote sensing data, socio-economic and statistic data, and infrastructure data. The information would be location specific.

AGMARKNET, on the other hand, could assist in developing synergetic collaborations among cooperatives, agricultural produce markets, agriclinics, and agri-business centres, creating "pathways" to rural prosperity.

In the Indian context, the emergence of an e-farmer is needed. It is a farmer who knows the worldwide market situation, has unhindered access to the markets and technology, possesses access to meteorological information, and extension advice can be considered as adequately equipped to enter the world of global partnership.

Digital development in rural areas, through various government programmes, was providing a broad base for uplifting the rural poor in India. That was a step towards establishing a location-specific e-government model for the poor in India, at the grass-roots level. However, one major problem that had an impacting on ICT usage by and for the poor was the language barrier. Egovernment for the poor had two basic needs: networking of people and networking of information. Both were essential. Development and use of ICT in agriculture assisted agricultural growth. The digital agenda was a positive force for fostering agricultural growth, poverty reduction and sustainable resource use in India. What was a "technology push" in 1990s was now taking the shape of "consumer pull" at the grass-roots level in India to usher in agricultural governance in the country. Digital initiatives provided resources for people and organizations working to understand and alleviate poverty.

The plenary focused on access to information provided through the digital networks the Indian Government was creating. Mr. Moni, when asked about the mechanisms in place to assist farmers to access information online and how many villages had information centres, replied that agricultural colleges and their trainees were the intermediaries who would take IT to the village level. Networks at district levels provided local language interfaces and training of trainers. Further channels of information were already created through cyber cafés and home connections, but those channels needed to be enhanced.