A Wired Initiative

Technology, of course, can build global communities. But itcan really do wonders, if an organized community in a specific geographic areauses it for development. The Warna Wired Village Project is a glowing example.While it is easy to use superlatives to describe power of technology, it isdoubtful whether the project could have become so successful in so short a time,without an organised structure that
already existed.

Warna Nagar, a cluster of 70 villages (46 from Kolhapurdistrict and 24 from Sangli district) around the river Warna in Maharashtra, hasan active co-operative society called Warna Nagar Co-Operative Society.Established in 1960 by a visionary leader, Tahasaheb Kore, the society works forbetterment of socio-economic conditions of the people of the area through mutualco-operation and sharing of knowledge. There are about eight bodies like WarnaDiary Development Board, Warna Women’s Co-operative Society, that are part ofthe main co-operative society. About 200-300 farmers from each village aremembers of the society. For most of these farmers, sugarcane is the major crop.

In 1998, National Informatics Centre (NIC) identified thesociety to build what is today known as "The Wired Village". In Aprilthat year, a joint project-team consisting of NIC, Government of Maharashtra,and Warna Co-operative Society was formed. While the project cost was dividedamong the three constituents in the ratio 50:40:10, the manpower is entirelysupplied by the society. The project was aimed at providing agricultural,medical, and educational information to villagers by establishing networked"facilitation booths" in the villages.

NIC, Pune played a major role in developing the software forthese applications and installing them on the machines. The wide area networkingwas done by a team from the NIC headquarters in Delhi.

The Application

The central hub is located in Tahasaheb Kore Institute ofEngineering Technology at Warna Nagar. This is connected by VSAT network withNIC, Pune through a 64 Kbps link. NIC, Pune is the gateway of the network to theoutside world.

There are information booths that serve as the basic accesscentres for the villagers. Information on crops cultivation practices, landdevelopment, pesticides, diseases control details, marketing details, billspayments positions of sugarcane and dairy are sought on the computer by thefarmers. Notably, they are available in the Marathi language.

Apart from information retrieval, there are two informationsystems available on the network. They are Dairy Information System andSugarcane Information System. The former contains information on all those, whoare part of the dairy system. Other information part of the system is thequantity of milk supplied by each farmer, fat content, billing information andcredit details, etc. This information is maintained and updated at the centraldatabase every day.

The Sugarcane Information System contains information on thecultivation schedule, quantity harvested and supplied to the society, deductionseffected by the Society towards credit, net income due to the farmers, etc.

Every village is also linked with the Directorate ofMarketing in Pune, which facilitates farmers in getting information on rates ofvegetables, fruits and other crops.

Apart from basic livelihood applications, the network isbeing leveraged on to take IT education to the children of that area, apart fromthe IT staff in the computer centres.

The Government of Maharashtra is planning to use the networkto disseminate other type of information, as the credibility of the"Computer" information is today the maximum among farmers, as comparedto TV, radio, and newspapers.

The project could be replicated in other co-operative societies. However,success does not depend on what technology gets deployed. It depends on how theparticipants accept the change. The success of Warna project shows thattechnology is best initiated by the users themselves and not by the Government.The Government could only act as a catalyst.