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THE INDIAN EXPRESS - MUMBAI
26. 01. 2000

MP tribal villages get wired, information now just a click of mouse away

PC is their magic box, mouse a friend

YOGESH VAJPEYI
DEHRISARAI (MP), JAN 25

   In the markets of Dehrisarai, they are taking about a magic box. It tells them what the price of potato is in big town markets far away. It tells them when their caste certificates are ready. It gives them copies of their land documents.
  They don't know what it is called but Dehrisaraj is now s wired village - one of the many in Madhaya Pradesh. The tribals of this hamlet have begun to go to the Gyandoot Intranet Information Center to check on the computer if the trader is cheating them on prices.
   They were diffident first, especially when they were told that it would cost them RS. 5 to

check the prices at the Soochanalya, as the center is known. Then they realised that it was better than losing hundreds of rupees to the middlemen.
The villagers who had been told by the trader that Rs 200 was the going rate for patatoes in the market found out that "the traders at Indore mandi, hardly 30 km away, were buying potato at Rs 400-500 per quintal. Then villagers of neighbouring Bagadi learnt the lesson that knowledge is power.
The Gyandoot has started providing residents of 600 Dhar village daily market rates of locally produced food grains and vegetable crops in nearby mandis of Dhar. Indore, Badanwar, Ratlam and Dahod as well as far off markets in Chennai, Mumbai, Delhi

and Hyderabad for Rs 5.
The Gyandoot also provides villagers on the spot copies of land records - revenue maps. Khasras and B1 documents etc - for Rs. 15. Farmers need them every kharif and rabi season to obtain bank loans. The banks have agreed to accept the records issued through Gyandoot Soochanalays and Chief Minister Digvijay Singh has announced that the vendors of these centers (called Soochaks) will now be empowered to notarise these documents.
The unique network which was inspired by the Warn experiment in Kolhapur district of Maharastra a year back will ensure that the hapless villagers don'' have to run around block tehsil and district
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PC in their magic box

headquarters needlessly, says Dhar District Collector Rajesh Rajoria.
  "They can now send application for income, caste and domicile certificates as well as requests for land demarcation and landholder's loan passbook on-line. These will be prepared within 10 days and the applicants informed online".
  It works, says Shankar Lal of Dehrisarai. He had applied for a scheduled tribe's caste certificates through the local Soochanalaya only last week. Within three days, he received an on-line reply asking him to collect it, "I spent only Rs. 10 and three days to get what would have cost me weeks of running around, "he says, Lal says he still can't believe it.
  The network has also connected the MY medical College Hospital Indore with Dhar District hospital and three primary health centers at Tirla Nilchha and Badawar to make specialist medical advice and referral services available to villagers. A dozen patients in remote areas were referred to Indore in the first fortnight of the network's trial run, which began on January 1.
  The Dhar experiment says officials, is cheaper than the Warna one and covers more people.

District Panchayat Chief Executive Officer Amit Aggarawal says "The 45 wired villages of Warna involved an investment of Rs 25 crore and benefited only sugar and dairy cooperatives, but the Gyandoot network covering 600 villages in 31 gram panchayats cost only Rs. 25 lakh."
The Soochanalatys also act as communication links between the government and the villagers. Aggarawal says, The allow complaints about non-delivery of services under government schemes - absent teachers, non-functioning pump sets etc- reach tehsil, block and district headquarters.
Panchayat funds have been used to install 21 Soochanalays at strategic bazaar points normally visited by the villagers. Local youngsters have been trained to work as operators (Soochaks). And after paying back the capital to the pahchayats, they are expected to run the Soochanalays on commercila lines, generating income through user charges.
In gunawad village, the Soochak has already been approached by private schools for computer training of its students and for desktop composing of their question paper and report cards.