TRANSCRIPT: WCC India Speaker Series Webinar 2
Technology Eco-systems for India’s Rural & Marginalized Communities
Wednesday October 27th, 2021 (4:00 PM IST)
Description: Digital infrastructure is an important component of ensuring access. we will explore the world of digital infrastructure, with special focus on provisions and initiatives (govt and private) to include rural and marginalized communities.
Speaker:
Ritesh Datta
Gender & Technology Advisor
Digital Frontiers
[BEGIN TRANSCRIPT: 00:00:12]
Ritesh Datta:
Hi, good afternoon friends and colleagues, and welcome to the second webinar of the USAID and Reliance Foundation, Women Connect India Speaker Series.
Today we talk about the Indian digital ecosystem and its accessibility in rural and marginalized communities across the country.
My name is Ritesh Datta, I am a gender and technology advisor at DAI Global and your host for the series, thank you for joining us.
Women Connect challenge India is the national version of the Women Connect Challenge initiative by USAID. The national version has been rolled out jointly by USAID and Reliance Foundation, and its national counterpart supports an initiative targeted at facilitating women’s access to digital tools and solutions.
The Speaker Series, planned as part of The India Challenge, was designed for The India Challenge Winners, that is all of you. Each month we invite domain specialists to come to talk to you, our grantees, and to bolster your understanding of gender digital divide and to help design impactful programs.
The upcoming monthly webinars planned on critical topics as part of the series are digital solutions for general digital divide program design which we hold on November 24th. Then we will talk about enabling digital technology and access to government schemes, which will be held on December 15th.
Coming back to today, we will talk about digital infrastructure targeted at people outside of the urban pockets in India.
In March 2021 some 825 million Indians were accessing the internet. However, in a country of 1.4 billion, that still leaves out about 41% of the population outside this boom.
Rural internet density in 2019 was about 25.3 internet subscribers per 100 people, compared to 97.9 in urban areas. Although you know 66% of the country’s population still lives in its villages.
Access remains unequal across the gender digital divide across genders, disproportionately affecting women. Digital infrastructure obviously is a critical component of ensuring access, and numerous public and private sector organizations are working with, and for rural communities to fill this gap in the Indian digital ecosystem.
To share more about this subject, we have with us today Ms. Vishakha Saigal. She's the president and head of strategic initiatives regulatory policy and research at Reliance Jio. And Mr. Michael Ginguld, cofounder and director of strategy and operations at HLB. Thank you Vishakha and Mikey for joining us. We also have with us today representatives from the 10 awardee organizations of the first USAID and reliance foundation Women Connect in the Women Connect India Challenge program. Thank you for making the time.
We will hear from our esteemed speakers in a minute, after which we will have an open Q & A round, so do jot down your questions while you hear our speakers so that you can ask them at the end.
Let me also remind you that the hashtag for this program is #WCCIndia. Please remember to keep posting content on your social media platforms that you active on during and after this webinar and use #WCCIndia on all of your posts!
So to start the conversation today, I would now like to introduce our first speaker, Ms. Vishakha Saigal. As I mentioned earlier she is the vice president and the head of strategic initiatives at Reliance Jio. She has extensive consulting experience across telecom technology, education, and media sectors, with both domestic and international clients. She has been vocal about the digital gender divide in India and various national and international forums as part of her current role. Please join me in welcoming Vishakha.
Ritesh addresses vishakha directly:
Vishakha I know you have some more work tonight so I'm really grateful that you took the time to speak to us despite your hectic schedule.
Vishakha addresses the audience:
Also please note that Vishakha looks forward to answering your questions at the Q & A session later, so keep your notepads handy and jot down your questions as you hear us speak. Over to you Vishakha.
Speaker:
Vishakha Saigal
Reliance Jio
VP & Head of Strategic Communications
[00:04:48]
Vishakha Saigal:
Vishakha addresses Ritesh:
Thank you Ritesh for the kind introduction, it's a pleasure to join you and Michael and all the other members for this very pertinent session.
Vishakha speaks to the audience:
The theme for discussion, which is around a technology ecosystem for India’s rural and marginalized communities is very important, Michael, especially in the current times. Building and enhancing the digital ecosystem for rural India is immensely critical for a nation like India, which has more than 65 percent of its population residing in rural parts of the country.
The pandemic has further reinforced and amplified the need to have equitable and adequate access to communication infrastructure for all citizens. This requires unwavering commitment and focus from both the government, as well as the private sector.
If we look at the digital landscape in India over the last few years, we've made rapid and remarkable strides in technology evolution from older voice-centric technologies, to 4G.
It took around 25 years to create the 2G network infrastructure in India. In comparison, if you look at the 4G trajectory, in just a span of 4 to 5 years we've managed to build extensive coverage of our 4G networks across every nook and corner of the country.
Thanks to expansive digital infrastructure, low data tires, affordable devices, there has been unprecedented uptake of digital services, making India an undisputed leader in mobile data consumption.
When it comes to accelerating the adoption of mobile internet, JIO has been a key driving force behind this. It was actually JIO’s launch that paved the way for widespread and affordable broadband access in the country.
We've made massive investments in building state-of-the-art next-generation digital ecosystems in India and have infused more than 50 billion dollars towards this since inception.
In line with our vision to provide equitable and inclusive access, we have built robust infrastructure in rural areas, and today JIO’s 4G LTE network covers more than 99 percent of our population.
From the government’s end also, there has been a huge thrust on connecting unserved and underserved populations programs like digital India and Bharanet. They've certainly contributed to connecting rural and geographically remote villages in the country.
Under Bharanet, which is touted as the world's largest rural broadband project, more than 1.5 black ramps have already been made service-ready.
Of course, this project faced its own set of challenges and delays, but nevertheless, the government is working to connect the remaining rampant charts by 2023.
As a part of the digital India initiative, the government has undertaken several measures to advance the digital ecosystem in rural areas. It has created an extensive network of common service centers, which are actually technology-enabled access points for the delivery of E-governance and public utility services in rural parts of the country. Apart from this, there has been a thrust in creating large-scale public digital platforms like Aadhaar, UPI, and the recently launched Coven, one of the largest in the world. They have become the bedrock for India's digital ecosystem.
All these collective efforts have resulted in the deeper proliferation and increased adoption of the internet from all segments across the country. However, there is still a sizable population that is digitally unconnected and remains devoid of the leapfrog opportunities and benefits that are provided by the digital revolution.
The pandemic has further exposed the digital gaps in the country and increased the likelihood of isolation and economic inequalities for people, particularly from rural and marginalized segments. Women especially from rural communities happen to be on the wrong side of the digital divide and are facing exclusion on both social and economic fronts.
There are a lot of impediments that need to be addressed if we really have to bridge the prevailing gender gap in India. Ramping up investments in digital infrastructure to further serve the remote parts of the country is paramount.
In relation to this, I would like to highlight a very important aspect. If we look at the overall annual spending on telecom infrastructure in India, a bulk of the spending is done by the private sector, which is around 80 to 85 percent. This is very unlike most large economies like the US, UK, or even Japan, wherein the percentage of government contribution to telecom investments is as high as 50 percent.
Even if we look at the national broadband mission that was launched by the government with a vision of providing broadband access to all the villages by 2022, it envisages an investment of 100 billion dollars, however, 90percent of investments are expected to be catalyzed by the private sector.
That is why it has become so important to have a conducive policy environment that enables the private sector to keep up the investment momentum that is needed for expanding digital infrastructure in remote and far-flung areas. In this direction, the recent policy reforms announced by the government are quite timely, and we provide the desired impetus for advancing communication infrastructure, which is a prerequisite for closing the digital divides in the country.
As far as JIO is concerned, we are totally committed to plugging the remaining gaps in our reach. There are very minimal parts of India that are not covered yet, and most of the uncovered population is in challenging geography, such as Naxalite areas, forest regions, hilly and snowbound areas, and we are progressively and gradually aiming for coverage.
Having said that, if you ask me we should be more concerned about the usage gap which is more profound than the coverage gap in India. This essentially means that despite living in areas that have broadband connectivity, people are outside of the digital realm. This can be attributed to multiple barriers and challenges faced by people in accessing digital services.
In my opinion, lack of digital skills and awareness are the biggest deterrents to the adoption of broadband services. They make it very very challenging to integrate technology into the everyday lives of people from rural and marginalized communities.
Another very prominent barrier is the lack of locally relevant content and services. Besides these, the deep-rooted societal norms and the cultural biases which disproportionately impact women in India further better internet usage in the country.
At JIO we understand that addressing the usage gap is critical for fostering greater digital inclusions, and for getting more people, especially women, online. Our commitment towards this is absolute and reflects in our overall business services and product strategy.
In an endeavor to create greater acceptance for digital services, we are focusing more and more on creating locally-relevant digital solutions which are in tune with the needs of rural and local communities.
We’ve built extensive capabilities in frontier technologies like artificial intelligence, IOT machine learning, NLP voice recognition tools, which we are extensively leveraging to create best-in-class digital solutions and products in areas of agriculture, livestock, health, education, and government tech. All of these are meaningful to rural communities and can help them mitigate the challenges that they face in their daily lives.
Another important aspect that we’ve recognized is that in order to further democratize the internet, we need to incorporate vernacular aspects in digital solutions. We are thus working towards ensuring that more and more of our applications, products, and digital tools support regional languages.
For instance, our JIO phone supports more than 22 Indic languages. Our collaboration tools like JIOmeet, important applications like MyJIO, all are available in key vernacular languages. This has already started resulting in increased uptake and adoption from rural segments.
In addition, addressing the device affordability barrier has always been a priority for us, and we’ve been quite successful in doing so thanks to our JIO phone which has been the gateway to the digital world for more than 100 million subscribers.
In our endeavor to further enhance the ecosystem for affordable devices, we soon are launching our JIO phone in collaboration with Google. This is going to be a fully-featured low-cost smartphone designed for Indian users and potentially these users will experience a smartphone for the first time in their lives.
We are confident that this will go a long way in increasing digital adoption especially from rural and economically weaker segments for whom device affordability is still a significant barrier. We are also hopeful that this will fast-track the transition of around 300 million 2G subscribers in the country to newer technologies like 4G.
Besides these, they were also working on unique ways to address the hurdles and challenges in distribution and last-mile limitations. In this regard amidst the lockdown, we had launched our associate program which enables our customers to provide recharge activation services for their friends, families, and even other community members using our JIOpod Live application. This has not only provided convenient access and minimized the impact of lockdowns on a lot of people, but also provided an opportunity for incoming generations.
This has been a very successful program for us, with around 1 million active users on a monthly basis. What makes this program really special is that most of the top performers are actually women. Taking cognizance of the prevailing skill gaps that we have in the country, we have majorly increased our trust in digital skills and awareness programs targeting women.
We are closely working with organizations like the GSMA to understand digital skill gaps and deliver need-based market-specific training to different segments, particularly rural women to augment their capacity to make meaningful use of digital tools and digital access.
To put it all together we are 100 percent committed to bridging and plugging the remaining gaps in access and adoption and will continue to explore innovative and scalable ways for bringing more people from rural and marginalized segments into the digital realm.
Specifically talking about the Women Connect India Challenge, needless to say, it’s a very important program for us. We have gone through all the projects which each of the 10 selected organizations will be driving, and I see so much potential in each and every project. There is a lot of synergy between some of the projects and the work that we are doing at JIO.
Themes such as digital literacy for women, improving access to government schemes, digital classrooms, livestock, and dairy solutions, are quite aligned with our internal initiatives and digital platforms.
For instance, we have a JIO easy gov platform which is our G2C solution for discovery and eligibility checks for various government welfare schemes. More than 350 central and state government schemes are already integrated with this platform.
Then we have a JIOkrishi platform which is our smart aggregate solution built to digitize end-to-end agriculture activity, and it includes many important services like farm management and IOT-based precision advisory. We are also building our IOT-based dairy and livestock platform for the digitization of daily management services with the intent to increase and improve the yield from livestock.
Health and education are other important areas where we’ve created compelling digital applications and tools. There is definitely a lot of possibility for cross-leveraging and collaboration, and we will be happy to connect the respective organizations with our products and technology leaders within JIO to explore opportunities for alignment, or for any guidance that may be needed at any stage of the project. Be rest assured we will provide all the support that is required to all the organizations.
On that note, I will conclude by reemphasizing that digital infrastructure is an absolutely essential catalyst for sustainable growth and development. Accelerating the delivery of digital services for unserved and underserved populations has to be a top priority for us, and as a nation, we need to ensure that benefits of digital advancement are permeated across all segments, irrespective of gender, geographic location, economic strata, or any other demographic parameter.
Thank you.
[00:19:10]
Speaker:
Ritesh Datta
Gender & Technology Advisor
Digital Frontiers
Ritesh Datta:
Ritesh addresses Vishakha:
Thank you Vishakha. I think that was really helpful, you covered a wide spectrum, you talked about the barriers, the things you are doing at Reliance JIO, and how we can leverage your work to strengthen the work that we are doing within Women Connect Challenge, and beyond in our projects.
That was very helpful and I’m sure a lot of people have a lot of questions. I for one have written down a few questions for you already, and I look forward to continuing the conversation at the end of the day during the Q & A, so thank you again.
Ritesh addresses the audience:
I would now like to welcome our second speaker for today’s session, Michael Gingold, or Mikey as we fondly call him. Co-founder and director of strategic operations for Air Jaldi. Mikey was born and raised in Israel and has close to 30 years of experience working in development projects across India, Indonesia, Cambodia, Nepal, and Israel.
Mikey is currently based in Dharamshala, in the state of Himachal Pradesh, with his wonderful family where he runs Air Jaldi, an internet service provider company that specializes in offering connectivity solutions in rural areas.
Remember to note down your questions for him as he speaks, which I’m sure he will be happy to answer during the Q & A session.
Over to you Mikey.
Speaker:
Michael Ginguld
Air Jaldi
[00:20:32]
Michael Ginguld:
Addressing the audience:
Thanks to Ritesh for the introduction, that’s a hard act to follow, JIO is not a small company and the achievements are quite impressive.
What I plan to do is the following things in 15 minutes or less; I want to give a view of what Air Jaldi is and what we do, and the second is I will, unfortunately, repeat some of the statistics that were already shared, and the idea here is to set the stage to the problem statements that we are dealing with together, the gender challenge, and this will follow a description of our work which has been going on for the last 12 years.
We will then talk about how we are part of the WGDP program, the USAID-supported connectivity, and the empowerment program. I'll talk a little bit about our approach to the same set of problems that I assume all the recipients are dealing with in one way or another. I hope you find it useful and I look forward to your questions.
Air Jaldi is a world internet service provider in telco parlance. It’s an ISP, and we’ve been in existence since 2007. We are operating in 9 states in India covering about 80 thousand square kilometers, with roughly 22 hundred thousand users and beneficiaries.
We serve all segments, and when I say all segments a lot of internet service providers tend to focus on one segment, such as the private or institutions. Our philosophy from the get-go was to connect rural India, and if we’ve made the effort of reaching a rural area, the idea is that connecting additional customers small or big is a relatively smaller marginal effort and a great marginal benefit.
The way we work is we take connectivity from what’s called the upstream from a fiber infrastructure more often than not, although it could be wireless as well, which belongs to the telecommunication companies in India such as JIO, Airtel, and BSNL. We take that connectivity and extend it further into our rural areas, and we do it using basically whatever is available to us in the toolbox, and when I say the toolbox I mean sets of technologies.
The idea is that we use wireless technologies and wire technology fibers in many areas in India, and Vishakha has pointed out that fiber and wire connectivity poses a challenge. It is not only snow-covered, rain-soaked, and desert-swept areas, but there are also other constraints in India to access fiber. This has been our bread and butter for the last 12 years, and we’ve gained quite considerable experience in that.
In addition to the provision of connectivity itself, we also provide enabling services that span from simple value-adding services, to entertainment, to technical solutions, and I'll talk more about that in a second.
A lot of times in rural areas bringing connectivity is the beginning of a problem not the beginning of a solution because the minute I bring connectivity and I connect something that needs to be maintained. Who does it, and how it is done poses a huge challenge, so that’s Air Jaldi in a nutshell.
Let’s talk a little bit about what we’re looking at in terms of divides. By the way, all the pictures that you will see are actual sites where Air Jaldi works, and this one is in Utrecht actually.
Michael references the photo shown at [00:25:38]
So when we talk about rural areas, I always say there’s this tautology, a rural area is rural because it’s rural. What do I mean by this? There are reasons why areas are rural, they could be geographic, they could be social, they could be socio-economic, or they could be a combination.
Be it as it may, for a provider this poses a basic set of challenges. There are technical challenges to reach areas, for example, look at the mountains here in the picture, it’s harder to reach those areas than to reach where I’m sitting now in the defense colony in Delhi.
There are economic challenges, in rural areas income levels tend to be lower, and therefore the ability and willingness to pay are lower. To start with a basic problem, supply is more costly and demand is lower, and the ability to pay is also lower so it’s already a thing that you need to bridge.
Now the reality is, this leads to less availability of services and higher costs or no availability at all. What happens at the moment in India in the last couple of years, we have seen a very radical change in terms of pricing for the customers in India.
Costs have dropped very significantly by some accounts, by almost 85 percent. This is great news for those who are already connected, again if I am sitting in the defense colony, I am paying one-fifth of what I used to pay 5 years ago. However, in a rural area, the cost of reaching them remains roughly the same. It’s gone down a little bit but remains roughly the same.
This means that those who have no access are actually looking at a growing gap, not a narrowing gap because the providers now have a cost challenge in addition to the challenges they faced before. So we’re actually looking at a market that is as challenging as ever, probably more, in terms of reaching those areas that Air Jaldi tries to focus on. In the parlance of connectivity or the urban-rural divide in India, we are talking about reaching tier 4 and below.
Let’s look at the realities as they are now in Ritesh, the urban population in India is 34 percent, and rural is roughly 66 percent. Broadband access is almost a mirror image of that, 38 percent rural and 62 percent urban. There is a huge task ahead of us Regardless of the great strides that have been made.
The second graph I was looking at of course is the gender gap.
Michael references the graph shown at [00:28:29]
The first issue is ownership. We can see that this is all ITU data widely available. Although 80 percent of men own mobile devices, 41 percent of women own mobile devices. This is even more alarming when we talk about use. Of the men who have mobile access, 36 percent use the internet while 64 percent don’t use it. For women, it’s 18 percent of those who have access.
Again, a yawning gap of usage, and what we are finding out from work that we do on a day-to-day basis and also from our discovery leading to our work on the project is that there’s a combination. First of all means, specifically economic means. Can women have the resources to enable connectivity, a device, and a monthly connection?
The second thing is when she has it, what are societal perceptions? It will not be news to anyone on this forum to learn that in rural areas women are prevented from using phones because they are tools of evil. Again let’s not pretend that the internet is only beneficial, the internet carries various issues and it needs to be dealt with. Now I don’t believe in censorship in any form or shape, but there is that perception in rural areas so women are effectively and actively being prevented from accessing things, we know that from experience.
The third thing is self-perception. Do I actually have use for the internet, and is it contributing to anything? Again and again, people think that it might not benefit them in any way because they equate the internet to a social network. I’m not going to talk about Facebook or Instagram or anything like that because this is not a bashing session, but a lot of the time people equate the internet to social forms, and it’s much more than that.
The picture here is of children in a school that we connect about 50 kilometers from Ranchi.
Michael references the picture shown at [00:31:20]
These girls are actually using Wikipedia here and this was not staged. I was so shocked to see them using media to search about the Muslim communities, so I took this picture about 3 or 4 years ago.
Now despite that bleak reality we actually have emerging needs, and they are there and they grow all the time. We're emerging out of two years of the pandemic and we see this mushrooming economic need. I can use the internet to purchase, but I can also use the internet to produce.
Education, all of us, or at least those of us who have brothers and sisters and kids who study, have struggled with the need to educate. And services, again purchases and provision, voice and presence, be it social media and being able to represent yourself, especially in isolation.
Look at the picture here again taken from one of the locations, it was not intended but the women are on the receiving side of a desk where they are being provided services by men and there is no reason why this should be the case.
Michael references the picture shown at [00:32:30]
I didn’t have time to include the great video of some of our women entrepreneurs and women team members who are leading but there’s no reason why they can’t sit on the other side.
This is the problem, now to approach any way of trying to begin to solve this we need to have a clear problem statement and a clear solution statement. I’ve gone through the problem, and I'll be sensor-based, trying to get to the solutions.
So the program that we have developed for the WGDP is called Productive Path. it is meant to address the challenges that I’ve outlined. The goal is pretty straightforward. First of all to increase the number of women connected, but I want you to look at the word meaningful internet connectivity. The discussion is more and more centered around what meaningful connectivity means.
Well, stick for a moment with tIe idea that it’s anything that contributes to societal, economic, and individual well-being, and I think all of the above are important. When we look at this and what we do and how we could contribute to this, we come with our set of tools which we call C plus 3T.
At the center of it all is connectivity. Connectivity is a necessary if not sufficient condition to anything that is internet enabled, and connectivity needs to be affordable, stable, and sufficiently fast, do not undermine any of these 3 cost factors.
The second thing is tools. If we want to move away from Facebook as my only main means of accessing the internet, people need to know what tools are available there. Our program will provide them with knowledge about what tools there are. There are hundreds and thousands of free tools, but there are also paid affordable tools, and we will provide knowledge, access and to some extent subsidy to these tools.
Tools without training are again a wonderful thing. I bought a car and it’s parked in the garage, and I bought access to whatever tools I have to enrich the car but I don’t know how to drive. Someone needs to train me. Training will be a part of what we do throughout the program.
Training will be mostly online but there will also be face-to-face interaction. Wherever Air Jaldi works, we will have teams on the ground, and these teams will touch our recipients.
I touched upon the issue of tech support, the idea that I gave you a tool, I trained you on it, I gave you connectivity and voila you will now discover how to use the internet and you will go forth and create a large or small scale business and that will be it. By the way in the upper right corner, there is a woman and she is running a small business in a common service center.
Michael references the picture shown at [00:35:58]
This is what a CSC looks like in a place like Jharkhand, this is not fancy. Now this woman needs to be trained, someone needs to tell her how to maintain her batteries. If the computer fails how do you fix it?
Below there is a small-scale enterprise outside of Butikhan where people are producing products and selling them online.
Michael references the picture shown at [00:36:10]
How do they do marketing? How do they run this? Tech support needs to be given to maintain those tools and we will provide that to our recipients.
What are the outputs? We are planning to reach about 15 thousand recipients there with a combination. Some will get basic training, some will get connectivity plus basic training, some will get connectivity plus basic training plus advanced training and support. This is not going to be done alone.
This is going to be done with an ecosystem that we are working on. We already have many of these linkages but we will be working to develop further linkages with some recipients, some contributors, some are both.
I don’t have time to go over each of these segments, but the important thing at the end of it all is the outcomes. If at the end of our work we will only be able to say we touched 15 thousand, 20 thousand, 5 million people, it doesn’t matter, if we cannot say to ourselves that we have actually contributed to making this a meaningful output, then we haven’t done much.
I’m a great believer in goals because I think goals inform outcomes and outcomes are really what we’re looking at here. What we’re looking at is a concentric set of circles moving from theory and provisioning to actually enabling women to either make a useful profitable business, help educate themselves and others, or develop and enhance their voices as women through voicing their needs for accessing services they’re deserving of and what have you.
This again is going to be our ultimate test for ourselves. In summary, again, I think we need to keep in mind that when we go and reach rural areas, we need stable connectivity and it is still not there in many areas as you all know. Connectivity needs to be supported, and once you have the connectivity and support you need to make that a meaningful proposition.
For whatever it’s worth, again Air Jaldi works in 9 states and continues to expand. I’ll be happy to explore with any one of you the possibility of us helping to create a very meaningful project. Thanks for your time.
Speaker:
Ritesh Datta
Gender & Technology Advisor
Digital Frontiers
[00:39:30]
Ritesh Datta:
Thank you, Mikey. One of the things I did not mention and I will mention now about Mikey is Air Jaldi is also the recipient of a USAID and Microsoft airband grant, under the program called Women’s Global Development and Prosperity WGDP fund, which Mikey talked about.
Many of these things that Mikey was discussing are going to be implemented as part of the program, correct Mikey?
Speaker:
Michael Ginguld
Air Jaldi
[00:40:10]
Michael Ginguld:
Indeed, and for whatever it's worth, I should mention as they call it proper disclosure, that Ritesh was involved in the program from very very early stages, in many ways helping us to frame some of these problems and their solutions.
Speaker:
Ritesh Datta
Gender & Technology Advisor
Digital Frontiers
[00:40:30]
Ritesh Datta:
It’s been a pleasure, Mikey, thank you so much. And I’m sure I have a few questions for you, and I’m sure the participants also have a lot of questions, so without any further ado, let me now open the floor for the Q & A session. I’m requesting participants who have questions for either or both of the speakers to use the raise hand function so that we can identify you and ask you to share your question. Once I request you to ask your question, unmute yourself, state your name and organization, mention who the question is directed at, and then ask the question.
To start, Ajita has a couple of questions, the first one is for Vishakha, so Vishakha can you talk a little bit about the Easygov platform you mentioned?
Speaker:
Vishakha Saigal
Reliance Jio
VP & Head of Strategic Communications
[00:41:31]
Vishakha Saigal:
Sure, Easygov is our platform to provide access to government welfare schemes, and this platform is enabled on various mobile applications. A lot of people in rural India and even in the urban centers are still not aware of the various welfare schemes which are launched by the government so it is very important to give them a platform to discover all the schemes.
Sometimes I need to know whether I’m eligible for a particular government welfare scheme, and those criteria are clearly outlined. It’s a very intuitive platform, and we are planning to support more regional languages going forward.
We are supporting lots of state governments, and also creating wide label solutions for this platform because you know some states have a different model and they want us to dedicatedly work with them and give them this interface for spreading awareness and applying for government schemes.
So yeah it’s an end-to-end platform, and at some stages, we are also doing the provisioning and fulfillment of the schemes and connecting the end-users to the fulfillment centers to take it forward, so you know a lot of these services we are also planning to integrate within the platform.
Govtech is an area that would need focus, and that’s why JIO is channeling its efforts to drive a greater adoption of e-governance and gap tech services across all segments.
Speaker:
Ajita, Audience Member
[00:43:10]
Ajita, Audience Member
So, Mikey, I’m unsure if you covered this because I lost connectivity for a bit, but when you were talking about C plus 3T and we were talking about tech support, I want to understand what that process is like and how to sustain those efforts beyond a certain point of time.
Speaker:
Michael Ginguld
Air Jaldi
[00:43:30]
Michael Ginguld:
It’s an excellent question. At the end of the day, what I was alluding to was a relatively labor-intensive process. The hope is that the initial training, plus the initial hand-holding, plus FAQ-like services will lead to a lighter touch.
Our experience unfortunately has shown us that it is not that easy. Our solution to that problem with a limited number of recipients relatively speaking is we already have 24/7 customer care, so they will have a number that they will always be able to reach. There will be a web UI that recipients will have access to that will have the answers. It’s going to be a combination of light and heavy touch training. I wish I had something easier as a solution but I don’t think there is one.
Speaker:
Ritesh Datta
Gender & Technology Advisor
Digital Frontiers
[00:44:45]
Ritesh Datta:
Thank you, Michael. I know we have a few questions on hand but let me take this opportunity to ask my question. So you know both of you in your own ways talked about the importance of content. Mike used the word tools, Vishakha did use the word content, and you talked about the importance of vernacular content as well. On the other hand, both of you also talked about the economic consideration, and when I say this I say it in the context of rural women getting connected. So any thoughts around that and how you all are planning to respond to these barriers as you go deeper in?
Speaker:
Vishakha Saigal
Reliance Jio
VP & Head of Strategic Communications
[00:45:31]
Vishakha Saigal:
If I may, one of the things that we’ve realized working with our teams and with on-ground partners is that the needs and preferences of women are very different compared to generally what men have so you know women tend to prioritize something that is more socially acceptable so needs around education and health, those digital solutions are more relevant for them.
In fact, this time around when we are working on our digital skills program, we’ve massively spent time on the ground with teams to understand what are the need gaps. One of the common themes that everybody sees across rural and urban areas is that they want to prioritize education.
All these rural women ask how can my child get online? How can I make him attend his classes? Is there a content module that I can show him to improve? So that was very surprising. The focus, especially from rural parts is women wanting their children to get access to digital education so that's the focus area for us.
The second thing is rotation. What we've learned is that in rural areas whatever we do we have to keep it very simple and that’s the philosophy behind JIO. When we launched we simplified the complex tariff structures and that the chairman said. He said that it's complex, it has too many caveats, and people will not understand, it has to be simple.
That same logic we apply in all of our solutions and applications. We are increasing our focus on chatbots because going forward if you forget the next 500 million people in the digital realm we have to have voice-centric technologies. Speech recognition and LLP are other important areas.
In addition, I mentioned all the offerings surrounding health, education, and livestock are very very important, you know people need to approve their yield from livestock and they need solutions around it. And we can provide simple solutions from farm advisory, weather alerts, and sensor-based technologies. Of course, there's a cost to it but we are trying to work on an ecosystem that makes these services more scalable and economically affordable for rural communities.
That's what I would like to say, over to Michael if he would like to add anything based on his experience.
Speaker:
Michael Ginguld
Air Jaldi
[00:48:37]
Michael Ginguld:
From where we are the issue of tools can come into the game. What we see more often than not is the perception of need, more often than not, comes from the perception of what the internet is. Now it's not going to be a magic bullet where you just open the spigot and show them a few apps and they'll understand what the internet is. Trust me I'm still struggling and I find tools every day so none of us are any different.
I think again I'm gonna tow on Vishakha's coattails on this one. You need to identify the needs and you need to translate those needs into tools, that's going to be our role in this project.
So if you are a woman, and I hate to use this example but say you are a woman and you are stitching pajamas and trying to sell them, is there anything in which you can help me? Or say I am making a chair, is there anything I can do apart from doing it for my family?
There are means and ways of doing it. Education is such a low-lying fruit but let's not forget that education is one aspect, and again as things are, when schools open again and I hope it's going to be tomorrow, some of it will go away.
Digital education will not go away, but the challenge for us will then be how to bring education into the classroom. That's another struggle that's been going on for 15 years, but just to summarize, we as leaders of these programs need to challenge ourselves with translating need statements to digital content. I think that’s where we can be most helpful.
Speaker:
Ritesh Datta
Gender & Technology Advisor
Digital Frontiers
[00:50:35]
Ritesh Datta:
I completely agree with Mike. I think it’s very important to take into consideration what they want in that sense and see how we can convert it into usable information and content that we can provide. I think we have a hand raised, Mr. Banerjee please go ahead if you have a question.
Speaker:
Abhishek Banerjee, Audience Member
[00:50:52]
Abhishek Banerjee, Audience Member:
Yes, thank you very much and good afternoon everybody. My name is Abhishek Banerjee, and I am from another foundation. I work as a regional manager here in another foundation and I am based in Rashi.
I would like to thank you and the entire team because Air Jaldi is one of the leading service internet providers for Jharkhand. It has a better reach in the rural area as well as the tribal areas. Lots of beneficiaries here are accessing the internet, and they are using this internet in their daily lives, especially for FNL tools. Now students are using the network from rural and tribal areas also, so I really want to thank Air Jaldi for their services.
My concern is here in very rural and the tribal parts Jharkhand, especially I say in Raji if we go to the east of the Raji there are lots of villages I have seen that their youths are accessing the internet and they are getting skills, and after that, they are getting jobs and migrating themselves in other metropolitan cities.
So if the tribal economy or rural economic concern, my question is that this migration is happening permanently. They are not coming back to their villages, lots of villages are only having 20 percent of male candidates of those who are earning in different cities, and finally, they are setting themselves. If you’re planning to improve the tribal or rural economy here in Jharkhand, although there is a scope to create livelihood here, if Air Jaldi can do something like that Air Jaldi must have lots of clients.
My question is, what is the planning or the agenda to develop this rural type of economy here in Jharkhand or other places as well?
Speaker:
Michael Ginguld
Air Jaldi
[00:53:46]
Michael Ginguld:
It’s an excellent question. In a world where money is no object as you may have realized ideas are not in shortage in Air Jaldi. Resources are always in shortage. But to try and answer your question seriously I think there are two ways to answer it.
One thing is as an organization, you need to choose your focus area. We have opinions about everything from graphic design to women’s empowerment, but we need to choose and Air Jaldi is an internet service provider.
Our main role is the provision of infrastructure and supporting meaningful uses of that infrastructure. When it comes to economic empowerment, I am acutely aware of the problem you mentioned. We recruit, train, and retain people from areas where we work, and I know that Sundeep is connected to us in certain locations, you know that there are teams in Jharkhand and there are people from rural areas.
The only hope that we can offer is to have the enabling conditions to do it. To borrow from precision agriculture, and I come from an agricultural background actually. To grow a plant there needs to be fertilizer, there needs to be water, and there need to be sufficient conditions to do it.
My hope is that stable internet connectivity can keep some of the people in rural areas. Do we hope that we can keep everybody from migrating outwards to an extent, yes? But the best hope is that we can provide them with the conditions that enable them to have a meaningful economic livelihood in their areas
Speaker:
Ritesh Datta
Gender & Technology Advisor
Digital Frontiers
[00:55:40]
Ritesh Datta:
Thank you, Mike. I think we have time for one last question. There are a few questions in the chat but I am just going to pick one. This is a question for VIshakha.
it says “you raise a very important point about keeping things simple for digital resources in rural India. This is something we are working hard on in our digital platforms for women and girls. You mentioned using chat boxes, can you give some more practical examples of simple tools that work well with the rural communities’ platforms?”. This is from Lisa from the Nandi Foundation.
Speaker:
Vishakha Saigal
Reliance Jio
VP & Head of Strategic Communications
[00:56:21]
Vishakha Saigal:
Hey Lisa, so to your question, what I was implying is that its chatbots. They are essentially conversational AI tools that are very effective for rural areas. For instance, you can set up a farmer’s help desk and digitally connect people over Whatsapp and voice recognition tools. People can ask specific questions in their own language.
There are multiple use cases for voice recognition, conversational AI, and we’ve implemented voice tools in our JIO phone wherein you can simply instead of typing because the literacy levels in rural areas are very low, you can talk it out. The AI engines or the machine learning algorithms actually translate that into text and you get a response.
So that is what we’re talking about because speech recognition tools are going to be very important given the literacy barriers that we have. In all the applications and all products, we should have an option to give a voice-based chat option to subscribers so that they can leverage the benefits of that application and solution without having to struggle with typing or the complexity of a smartphone. That’s essentially what I meant and that’s about it.
Speaker:
Ritesh Datta
Gender & Technology Advisor
Digital Frontiers
[00:55:40]
Ritesh Datta:
Thank you Vishakha. I think that's all the time we have today for this session. I wish we had a little more time for discussions because I know we have some questions we have not been able to answer, but Mikey has very generously shared his email in the chat if you have any further questions for him. Feel free to write to me and I can forward whatever you feel comfortable with. Same with Vishakha, if you have any questions for her, write to her or write to me and we will find a way to connect both of you.
A note of gratitude to Vishakha and Michael. Thank you both for taking the time to attend and for sharing your experiences with all of us. It's been really really helpful and I think there's a lot of learning that both of you have jointly been able to give us. I also want all of the attendees, and again if you have any further questions write to us and we'll be happy to facilitate it.
I'll stop there, again thank you so much for your time, and have a wonderful afternoon.
[END TRANSCRIPT: 00:59:15]