IT cos plan trek into the country

PUNE: It’s not just consumer durable and non-durable goods companies which are hitting country roads. The software industry is not far behind, going by the multi-million dollar rural focus of Intel and Microsoft. While Intel has focussed, in the Baramati region, on tele-diagnostics and commercial kiosks, Microsoft is pushing for computer education in rural areas.

The software industry, wanting to catch them young, is targeting rural youth by building on the software industry-driven salary dreams of rural India, through a host of local facilitators like NGOs, who help bridge the gap and take technology to the hinterland.

“We expect to make 60,000 people in rural Maharashtra computer-literate through this programme, for which we want individuals and corporates to donate computers,” PV Thomas, chairman of the Delhi-based Indian Society of Agribusiness Professionals (ISAP), an NGO promoting livelihood programmes.

He added that they have received 35 computers from Motorola and ICICI Bank. The programme is scheduled to spread across the state in another three months and hence, the need for donated PCs is increasing, he said.

ISAP began its pilot project across Maharashtra in February, with an initial focus on 350 of the state’s 42,000 villages and is already functional in 60 villages in some 17 districts.

The aim of the project is to get individuals and corporates to contribute personal computers, preferably Internet-enabled ones, even if the village does not yet have a Net connection. Since the project will run in 350 villages across the state, they need 350 computers, at the rate of one per village.

The three-month course is run by a local, trained and paid employee for a fee of Rs 1,500. Pradeep Lokhande, who heads rural relations of a rural marketing firm stressed that the training at the rural computer centre is imparted by a local trained by Microsoft, which is funding this project.

“Even if the trainer gets a salary of Rs 1,500 per month in a village, it compares favourably with the Rs 8-10,000 he/she would get in a town,” Mr Lokhande explained. Pradnya Malkar, a 21-year-old Class XII pass who runs the centre in Bibavane of Sindhudurg district, on the Konkan coast, stressed the convenience of working and earning in her own village.

Dr Thomas added that the three-year, Rs 4.5- crore project, includes Rs 1.5 crore from Microsoft, in the form of syllabus, software and training the trainer. Each centre costs ISAP Rs 10,000 per month, which is also a strategic partner of the central government’s Ministry of Information Technology’s Mission 2007.