Knowledge Services, Innovations and Delivery

LifeLines India, an innovative yet simple-to-use phone based helpline service is helping improve the lives of rural communities with access to technology and critical information, of much use in their daily lives.

Developed by OneWorld in collaboration with British Telecom and CISCO, the LifeLines service is an endeavor to bridge the digital divide in rural India through provision of information, guidance and advice –

• to farming communities as an agri-advisory helpline, and

• to teachers in rural schools as an academic support helpline

Users access the service through a telephone – either a mobile or landline phone - to put in their queries; these queries are responded to by relevant experts and the answers are then made available to users through the phone within 24 hours, in a simple and easy procedure.

At the background of this fairly simple process, lie some complex communication technology and intricate computing applications based on the internet that enable management and processing of a large database of queries and answers, stored in both audio and text formats.

LifeLines Agriculture

The LifeLines service was first launched in the field of agriculture in September 2006 to cater to farmers’ farm information needs, starting with around 100 villages across 2 states. 

A farmer calls the LifeLines service

Presently the service reaches over 1 lakh farmers in 2066 villages across 25 districts in 4 states – Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh.

Implementation partners Indian Society of Agri-business Professionals (ISAP), Datamation Foundation and TaraHaat facilitate service provision on the ground through a network of field coordinators. ISAP additionally also serves as the domain expert for the service, providing advice and guidance to farmers on varied fields of agriculture and allied activities like organic farming, Integrated Pest Management (IPM), Government schemes on loans, subsidies and insurance, as also region-specific market information.

Approximately 400 – 450 queries from farmers are received in the service every day. The LifeLines system has a mechanism to log every answered query into a database of Frequently Asked Questions; this FAQ Database currently stores over 130,000 FAQs.

Over last two years of its operation, the Lifelines service has been fairly successful in delivering the desired benefits to farming communities as originally envisaged in its project objectives. Longitudinal surveys conducted have indicated a positive trend in the farmers’ satisfaction levels accruing out of increased production and as a corollary, increased income ranging from 25% to 150%.  

LifeLines Education

The LifeLines-Education service was introduced following the success of the service in the agriculture sector.

A teacher makes her call

This is a phone-based academic support service for teachers to help them with information, handy and necessary, in their daily classroom transactions. The service links up teachers in remote, rural schools to receive subject-related guidance and advice from education experts, who may otherwise not be as easily accessible.

Like LifeLines-Agriculture, the LifeLines-Education service is also facilitated on the ground through field volunteers associated with the implementation partners. Presently the service is being implemented by OneWorld South Asia on a pilot basis in 2 states –

• West Bengal: in partnership with Vikramshila Education Resource Society (VERS), Quest Alliance and USAID; and
• Rajasthan: in partnership with UNICEF and the Government of Rajasthan

In West Bengal the service operates in the Monteshwar Block of the Bardhaman district where it reaches about 1800 teachers in 571 schools across 164 villages. In Rajasthan, it is being implemented in the Udaipur district covering nearly 12000 teachers in 4691 schools across 11 blocks.

Since its launch in January 2008, the LifeLines-Education service has been able to position itself as a useful academic support helpline for teachers.

The queries addressed by the service till date range from academic subjects at the elementary level like History, Geography, General Science, Mathematics and English; to queries on pedagogy, classroom management, policy and administrative matters. 

Going forward

OneWorld is now focused on forging new multi-stakeholder partnerships to explore and extend the potential of the LifeLines platform to further applications. Dialogues are in progress to take LifeLines to new domains and new locations and create sustainable rural e-services, not only in India but also beyond its borders.