Hundred Mbps a pipe dream…..Rohit Prasad
We are very happy your company is interested in primary education. Can you help us computerise all the government schools in two districts? the earnest bureaucrat had asked. In my previous life as the head of CSR of an IT company, I had taken him on a tour of the schools we were supporting.
We turned down the invitation, not just because of the size of our budget, but because we knew from our experience that his scheme would not work. Computer labs in schools do not make a computer-savvy generation. Much more is needed including teachers, local language software, maintenance, and electricity. Beyond all this are even more fundamental challenges, for example ensuring children, especially girls, come to school.
But governments in general dont seem to be able to appreciate this fact, not just in education but in most departments. They act in silos, assuming, in the example cited, that the job of providing computers belongs to one department, teachers to another, electricity to a third, and software to a fourth.
The debate on the speed of internet connectivity in rural areas smacks of this congenital flaw of governments. One influential strain of thinking holds that the speed of connectivity required is inversely proportional to the financial and social well-being of a region. Less privileged people need higher speed connectivity in order to get access to urban amenities like quality schooling and healthcare. There are plans afoot to provide 100 Mbps optic fibre connectivity to every gram panchayat.
The task of providing connectivity involves more than just laying the optic fibre. It requires making sure the electricity is available, skilled personnel are on hand for maintenance, and costs are manageable. Further, providing e-health and distance learning requires yet another step, that of ensuring that all the complementary elements of the service are available, economical and sustainable.
The oft-repeated defence that ultimately things will come together, shows a callous disregard of the enormity of peoples problems which need to be solved in the here and now.
Today there is a very low perceived need for the internet in rural areas. A survey in Uttar Pradesh and Meghalaya conducted along with Prof Rupamanjari Sinha Ray shows that even among relatively well off people, only 7% to 15% feel a need for any internet service including email, job search, and song downloading. A still smaller minority is able to afford the service. This would be true for the vast majority of our villages.
The lack of perceived need no doubt reflects the intelligence of the citizen, who realises that the internet has nothing to offer for his/her day-to-day needs. In districts where e-government services have been introduced a higher perceived need for the internet is observed.
While the optic fibre option reduces the per unit Mbps cost, we should remember that this is only under the assumption of full utilisation of the bandwidth. In a village with below a thousand people it would be highly optimistic to expect even 10 people to use the internet simultaneously.
There are likely to be two to three computers in total and a total capacity of 4-5 Mbps connection will do. We cannot expect there to be a tidal wave in the use of the internet in the next few years. Hence the cost per unit of the bandwidth that actually gets utilised is going to be higher with higher bandwidth provisioning.
Entrepreneurship and low energy solutions are the magic glue that will bridge the digital divide. A process must be initiated in which the connectivity and the associated content and services move in tandem, and inexpensive assisted services are provided. While the government has bid out the task of providing connectivity through its Common Service Centre (CSC) scheme, a better approach would be to subsidise connectivity entirely and tender only the remaining digital services.
This was the approach followed in many successful countries like Malaysia. This would ensure lower priced connectivity, and initiate a process of orienting rural consumers to the emerging benefits of the internet.
Given that in most villages there is no space for more than one internet kiosk, the government should allow one operator to function, with the stipulation that the price of services should be no more than in the nearest urban centre. The successful operation of the internet kiosk will enable another operator to naturally enter in a few years.
Only if such a gradualist approach is followed will a tipping point be reached five-to-six years later where a 100 Mbps line will be relevant for every gram panchayat. Connectivity costs will then also be much lower. When it comes to bridging the digital divide we need to make haste slowly, if we hope to get anywhere at all.
(The author is associate professor of economics, MDI Gurgaon)