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Bagar, Rajasthan
Its 6:24 in the morning on a very very cold night (day?). And I find myself sitting in my bed, writing a journal entry after quite a wait.
The cold yes – its cold here! It used to go down to 6 degrees C (low 40s) at night – tonight its quite a bit lower. It rained yesterday during the day, which dropped the temperature. And this morning it is still raining. And the fog has come in quite thick.
This effectively puts a halt to my plans of getting out and finally running after over a week’s break. Well, I could tough it out - the bijli (electricity) will go out at 7, and not much happening this early in the day during the winter times (even the shops start opening at 8 in the market).
I digress – lets get back to the topic at hand – what HAVE I been upto in the last couple of months (I think it has been that long since my last update):
Ah yes, I believe my last late night excitable post was around completely switching my focus area here from computer utilization to solar power. There were quite a few reasons behind that – mainly that in the weeks preceding it, I’d been trying to assess the needs for computer utilization in the community. And maybe it was my lack of skill in doing a needs assessment or applying technology to rural India, but there weren’t too many areas that I was coming out with where technology could be applied to a certain audience to reap some great benefits. And from all my ‘research’ – i.e. looking at papers and cases studies – the greatest need that computers tended to address in a rural setting was that of connectivity. A VSAT link to the Internet can provide remote communities the kind of access to information that can make significant impact on their lives: the weather forecast for a fishing village, the mandi (market) price of agricultural produce for a farmer, ability to quickly and cheaply communicate with loved ones, suppliers, buyers, doctors, government officials, specialists in the bigger towns and the bustling cities.
And for a rural setting, Bagar is quite well connected. On the Jaipur-Pilani state highway, it is exactly halfway between two major town: 15kms east from Jhunjhunu, the district headquarters, and 15kms west from Chirawa. Pilani, another major town (famous for the Birla Institute of Technology and Science – BITS) is another 15km from Chirawa. Buses ply to these cities every 15 minutes or so, throughout the night, and also to Jaipur and Delhi every hour or so.
If road connectivity is decent, telecom connectivity is even better. There are 5 cellphone towers in this town of 15,000, as well as landline phone connectivity. Commercial internet is available at dialup (and a bit faster) speeds via the landline or the cellphone (we use the Reliance cellphone – twice the speed of dialup).
A decent percentage of the populace reads the newspapers quite regularly. It also helps having 3 newspaper agencies in town, as well as a library that stocks 11 dailies (including 3 in English).
Now the picture isn’t all that rosy either – there may be access to Internet, but almost no one uses it. And the nearness to the major towns keeps the local businesses from expanding (there is just better price, quality and choice to be found in the bigger towns).
And computer utilization itself? Surprisingly, there was some. There were 2 computer centres (1 a real permanent centres, another was a guy with two computers, now closed) providing basic computer education. Most of the schools also had computer labs (built when the Rajasthan government made computer education mandatory – and abandoned when it reversed that decision a couple of years later). The private schools do continue to teach computers though. The photo studios, printing and music guys all had computers for their own uses. And by most estimates, there were around 50 private computer owners in town.
What it all boiled down to, in my mind, was that I couldn’t find a burning ‘need’ for computer technology in this town. It just didn’t seem like a development priority – there just were bigger issues e.g. a consistent supply of power in the adjoining dhaanis (little villages).
Here’s how that obviously changed. Our team lead/manager/staff person here was convinced that I had zero/zilch/0 motivation to continue with the computer technology area, and recommended I just focus on something of my liking (hence solar power). Two days later though, we had a visit from the founder/director of Indicorps – Anand. He made a couple of simple yet powerful observations (yet again highlighting the power of the outside perspective):
1. We had a lot more resources than we’d anticipated/assumed (it was way comfortable living compared to village life, we were well connected, we had the funds and influence to back us, the population had money to support some sort of commercial venture etc). However, instead of being more empowered because of the resources at hand, we’d managed to make ourselves feel less empowered because of this.
2. There are still tremendous opportunities to develop this town. He put it in a way that still rings with me: “Ask yourselves – would you live in this town? Then let’s work to make this a place that you’d want to live in”. Our task here then was not to take this town from 0-30, it was to take this from 50-100, a place that can compete with the best of India.
These two facts had quite an impact on my thinking about my project – I have the money, I had commercial Internet, I had a basic seed of a computer literate population – let me use it! And yah, there is so much more that I did with computers back in the US, there has to be tremendous potential here for the same. And so what if this maybe something that is not needed – its something that raises the bar. A few weeks later I would come up with an analogy: Just because there are a few students behind in a class, the teacher cannot ignore the ones who are ahead. We can’t wait to only focus on the kids that are behind and bring everybody upto a basic level. We have to continue to move the class ahead, and continue raise the standards for everybody.
My experiment here then was not that of need. It was of potential.
A few things came out of that visit – I decided to stick to computer tech utilization as my project. There was yet another cycle of project planning and proposal writing. As mandated, we travelled to seek answers and much-needed inspiration from other organizations in India doing similar work.
And I managed to make peace with what I’m doing here.
