ICT for Poverty Reduction : Myths, Realities and

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Global Knowledge Partnership
Geneva, 11 December 2003
ICT for Poverty Reduction Myths, Realities
and Development Implications
M.S. Swaminathan UNESCO Chair in
Ecotechnology President, Pugwash Conferences on
Science and World Affairs M.S. Swaminathan
Research Foundation, Chennai
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Be the Change you wish to bring about
- M. K. Gandhi
ICT for Poverty Reduction
Guiding Principles Antoyodaya and Trusteeship
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Digital happiness

• Technology
• Techno-infrastructure
• Content value added information
• Language
• Gender
• Partnerships

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Asset Building and Poverty Reduction

• Poor are often illiterate and have no assets like
  land, livestock, fish pond or productive skills
  and survive on uncertain wage labour. Asset
  Building has to be the major goal of ICT.
• Achieving a paradigm shift from unskilled to
  skilled work is basic to both poverty reduction
  and a healthy and productive life
• Acquisition of market driven skills has to be
  through the pedagogic methodology of learning by
  doing. Poor are able to take to new technologies
  like fish to water, if they are enabled to do so
  through practical training

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ICT and Poverty Reduction

• ICT should be a vehicle for imparting
  market-driven knowledge and skills
• Knowledge transfer and access to the inputs
  necessary to apply the knowledge should be
  synchronized in time and space
• Content should receive as much attention as
  connectivity
• Generic information should be converted into
  location and time specific information by local
  level Knowledge Managers

Contd..
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ICT and Poverty Reduction

• Rural Knowledge Managers should preferably be
  women, since this will help to bridge the gender
  divide in terms of self-esteem and social status.
• Forward linkages with reliable information
  sources and backward linkages with markets,
  hospitals, etc have to be built into the ICT
  programme
• Providing opportunities to landless labour
  families for value-added non-farm livelihood
  options should be a priority goal.
• The programme should aim to attract and retain
  youth in rural professions

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Content

• User and demand driven
• Generic into location specific knowledge
• Farmer Participatory Knowledge System
• Symbiotic Linkages
• Lab to Lab
• Lab to Land
• Land to Lab
• Land to Land
• Cadre of Rural Knowledge Managers

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Bridging the Digital Divide a Powerful Tool for
Bridging the Gender Divide
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Household Entitlement Card
Information Empowerment on Entitlements
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http//www.nemoc.navy.mil/Library/Metoc/Indian
Ocean Bay 0f Bengal/Models/Swaps/Series/index.html
ICT and Ocean Fisheries
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Primary Conservers Rights
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ICT and Job-led Growth Biovillage
The real voyage of discovery does not consist of
seeking new landscapes, but in having new
eyes. - Marcel Proust
Livestock and Livelihoods 75 million women and 15
million men are involved in Dairy Enterprises in
India
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Multiple Livelihoods
Multiple micro- enterprises for livelihood
security
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Biological Software for Sustainable Agriculture
Self-help Groups for Trichogramma Production

• MSSRF helped to convert Trichogramma production
  into a village-based cottage industry
• Several women self help groups produce and market
  Trichogramma

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Easy and Timely Availability of Credit
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National Virtual Academy for Food Security and
Rural Prosperity (Hub and Spokes Model)
Linkages Lab to Lab, Lab to Land, Land to Lab,
Land to Land
Uplink Satellite
Web based interactive portal
State Level Hub (MSSRF) Data Managers (both
connectivity and content)
Data Generators Providers
Data Users (Rural families)
Block level hub
Integrated use of the Internet, Cable TV,
Community and Ham Radio, Open Farm Field Schools
programme and Community Newspaper for launching a
Knowledge Revolution in Rural India
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Content Priority Areas

• Weather
• Water
• Energy
• Health
• Agriculture (Production, Processing and
  Marketing)
• Biodiversity and Ecosystem Management

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Mrs D Usha Rani is a keen health worker, and has
organized several medical camps in the village,
and brought an awarness about AIDS and
de-addiction of alcoholics in the village. She is
truly an eye-opener to the villagers. With help
from an eye hospital, she has been routinely
testing the eyes of the villagers, and restored
clear vision to more than 100 people in the
village. She is a keen naturopath, and is helping
the farmers in offering herbal remedies to the
common livestock maladies.
Fellow of NVA
Prime Movers of Rural Knowledge Revolution
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Cataract Free Zones
Collaboration with Arvind Eye Hospital,
Pondicherry
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Community Managed Gene, Seed, Water and Food
Security System
(Banks with a difference)
Gene Bank
Seed Bank
Water Bank
Grain Bank
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Komala Pujari Leader of the Community Food
Security Movement
Equator Initiative Award was given to Orissa
Group at Johannesburg in September 2002
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MSSRF Tata National Virtual Academy Child
Friendly Villages

• Elimination of maternal and foetal under
  nutrition to avoid low birth weight in babies
• Male female sex ratio
• Literacy
• Under 5 height / weight ratio
• Immunisation
• Abolishing Child Labour

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Local voices and UN Millennium Development Goals

• NVAs Vision One Million NVA Fellows by 2010,
  at least one woman and one man in every village
• NVAs Mission Help SHGs to evolve into
  Sustainable Self-help Groups (SSHGs) rooted in
  the principles of economics, ecology and gender
  and social equity.
• The bottom line of the NVA movement in rural
  India is food, health, literacy and work for all