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Programme Experiences

Indira Soochna Shakti (ISS) - Chhattisgarh, India

Summary The Chhattisgarh government, in collaboration with a private firm, launched a project in 2001 to increase access on the part of 250,000 girls in all 1605 state high schools to information technology (IT) education. Young volunteers, having been empowered with IT education, then lead a broader state initiative to bring locally relevant information and IT to all citizens. In the process, girls emerge as technology resource persons and community leaders.

Main Communication Strategies Indira Soochna Shakti (ISS)'s central strategy is using private-public partnership to bring IT education to high-school girls in a cost-effective way. The government-affiliated Chhattisgarh infotech Promotion Society (CHiPS) selects a private partner through open-competitive-transparent bidding for a 3-year period (as of this writing, the partner is AISECT, an IT education society). This entrepreneur is provided space in the schools and permitted commercial IT use outside school sessions. In return, the government pays a cost-competitive fee of US $1.1 (Rs. 54) per girl per month. In the first project year, the government paid for the IT education of girls from disadvantaged segments of society. Beginning in July 2002, the government paid for the IT education of girls from all segments of society. (Boys pay their own fee.)

Forty-four percent of the schools reached by ISS are in forest areas; many of these schools had to be connected to electric lines before computers could be installed. In other schools, extra rooms had to be constructed. Suitable instructors were not available locally in remote villages, so teachers were brought in from cities. The National Centre for Software Technology (NCST) helped identify a local language solution providing integration of data with a platform-independent end-to-end scaleable model. This approach is designed to solve the problem of diversity of incompatible local language solutions.

While an end in itself, this education is also meant to equip ISS girls to take part in the Chhattisgarh Online information for Citizen Empowerment (CHOiCE) Project, which reflects the government's vision of ensuring access to information on the part of all citizens. The key strategy here is building a human network to support the development of a technological network. Specifically, as part of CHOiCE, ISS volunteers share networked handheld community computers in villages, routing information and information-enabled services of local relevance. The goal is to network all Village Councils. The pilot phase of the project is under implementation in 246 villages; ultimately, all 9,129 Village Councils in the state will be covered. ISS volunteers will also assist in the creation of a Citizen Database and Village Resources Database for CHOiCE as part of the People's Reports initiative (in association with the UNDP and the Planning Commission of India).

Key Points Chhattisgarh is of an essentially rural (80%) and tribal (32.5%) character; 35% of people are illiterate and 40% live below the poverty line. The state's financial resources are modest. "Teledensity" is less than half the national average. Internet subscribers here number fewer than five per 10,000 people.

Prior to programme launch, only 5% of target schools in the state had access to IT education. 46,263 girls in 662 schools (41%) enrolled in ISS in 2001 and were provided with IT education by the government (another 9,000 paid their own fee). Boys outnumber girls two to one at the high school level. The perception that women do not go on to earn money, and that their education merely adds to costs, in some cases leads resource-strapped parents to forgo their daughters' education.

Partners CHiPS; a private partner (currently AISECT); NCST; local government (Mahasamund, Bagbahra and Fingeshwar Blocks); National Informatics Centre (NIC); Planning Commission of India; and UNDP.

For more information, contact: CHiPS 204-A, Mantralaya, D.K.S. Bhawan Raipur- 492 001 Tel.: 91 (771) 221204 / 221304 Fax: 91 (771) 221304 CHiPS site ISS site

The source for this information has been The Communication Initiative