Peter Van Dijck’s Guide to Ease

1. Six days with the Akshaya project: day 1: overview
2. Day 2: technology
3. Day 3: entrepreneurs
4. Day 4: promotion
5. Day 5: training
6. Day 6: conclusions

The Akshaya project, launched in December 2002, has rolled out complete internet access in all of the villages of one of the more backward areas of India using a mix of wireless technologies, and successfully trained one member in each of the region’s 750,000 households to use the computer. The team is now creating an innovative business model to ensure sustainability. Even though it is still only starting, it is widely considered a success story of using technology for rural development.

Over the following week, each day I will write about a different aspect of the project.

I was going on a trip to India and was looking for stories on technology and rural development, when I found this story on News.com: Indian state rolls out wireless broadband. There are a few other stories on the web, but no detailed description of the project (apart from the project’s own website).

I spent three days visiting the Akshaya project in Malappuram, a region in the Kerala province in south India. The project headquarters is in Malappuram city, the capital of the region. The team consists of 8 people, 5 MBA’s (they’re all fairly young) and a few people to help out. The strategy of the project is decided by the Kerala IT mission people in Thiruvananthapuram, the capital of Kerala.

Project headquarters in Malappuram city.

The team’s computer room.

The project people were extremely helpful, they patiently answered all my questions (even the dumb ones) and drove me around to visit different Akshaya centers.

The car.

I wanted to find out how getting access affected the lives of the villagers. The questions are well known: “What use can a computer be to someone earning less than a dollar a day? What use is information technology in a country that has a low penetration of telephony and computers, where even electricity is not assured, and where millions are still illiterate? “.

In Malappuram, 60% of households has a breadwinner away from home in one of the Gulf states. Telephone penetration is low, so communicating with their families could be one big advantage of using internet. I was hoping to interview people using the centers in a somewhat ethnographic manner. Etnographers often take months or years to study a project like this, and I found out why.

I failed - I didn’t find out how access influenced the lives of the villages.

I only met a few people actually using the centers, and interviewing them was hard due to cultural differences, lack of experience on my part and the language. There are 170 languages spoken in India, in Kerala most people speak Malayalam. (Like Spanglish or Singlish, Manglish also seems to be used.) Many people also speak varying degrees of English, but not the villagers that use the centers. So I was limited to interviewing the entrepreneurs who operate the centers and the Akshaya team.

Interface of a teaching tool used in the project- in Malayalam.

Luckily, there has been some research into the social and cultural aspects of the project. I am trying to contact them and will report back later.

So my project became more of a case study instead of an ethnography. I was talking to the tactical people - so I will talk mostly about the How of the project, not so much the Why (strategy) or the So what (results).

During the following week, I’ll report on the different and clever ways in which the project succeeded in educating one person of every household in computer use.

Many of these households are muslims, and many are villagers with little experience with or access to technology. I’ll talk about the innovative technology, the business model, promotion, training and more. Questions and comments are very welcome!

For me, the biggest lessons were:

• India is a big and diverse country.
• There are literally 1000s of interesting projects happening - India is a big and diverse experiment in ICT.
• Doing a thorough study takes time.
• Thorough studies and analysis are necessary - most reporting through the news channels stays on the surface.

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