by N. Vijayaditya

USHERING IN the information technology (IT) revolution to villages where more than 70 per cent of the Indian population lives is a dream that has come true at Warana in the Kolhapur District of Maharashtra. The special IT Task force set up by the Prime Minister recommended modernising the cooperative movement through use of state-of-the-art Information technology. This led to the "Wired Village" project initiated by the Prime Minister’s Office.

The key objective of the project is to demonstrate the effective contribution of an ICT infrastructure to the socioeconomic development of a cluster of 70 contiguous villages around Warana Nagar in the Kolhapur and Sangli Districts of Maharashtra. The project aims to:

• Utilise IT to increase the efficiency and productivity of the existing cooperative enterprise by setting up a state-of-the-art computer communication network:
• Provide agricultural, medical, and educational information to villages at Facilitation Booths in their villages:
• Provide communication facilities at the booths to link villages to the Warana cooperative complex:
• Bring the world’s knowledge at the doorstep of villagers through the Internet via the National Informatics Centre Network:
• Provide distance education to both primary and higher educational institutes; and
• Establish a Geographic Information System (GIS) of the surrounding 70 villages leading to greater transparency in administration especially in matters related to land.

The Warana Project is jointly carried out by the National Informatics Centre (on behalf of the central government), the government of Maharashtra and the Warana Vibhag Shikshan Mandal (educational department). The estimated cost of the project is around $600,000 (Rs. 2.6 crore). Of the total cost of the project 50 per cent is being borne by the central government, 40 percent by the Maharashtra government and the remaining 10 percent by the Warana Vibhag Shikshan Mandal.

Warana Nagar, situated on the banks of the Warana river, lies in a green valley about 35 km from the city of Kolhapur and about 400 km from Mumbai. The transformation of Warana from a barren to its current prosperous and fertile region began with the setting up of a cooperative factory near the village of Kodoli in 1959.

The Warana Co-operative Complex was a forerunner of integrated rural development involving the cooperative movement that has had a classic ingredient of success—peoples’ participation. The Warana Co-operative Sugar factory initiated this movement that has resulted in the formation of over 25 cooperative societies related to sugar, milk, and poultry production. The total annual turnover of these societies exceeds $ 1.5 million (approximately Rs. 6.5 crore). Most of the societies are located within a radius of 4 km. The complex has its own EPABX facility for voice communication between various centres and societies.

The sugar factory is the backbone of the Warana complex. Weaker sections of society have experienced economic gorwth and a level of prosperity unimagined earlier as a result of direct employment. The sugar factory has won several awards for its efficiency and productivity. The Warana paper mill was set up to utilise the waste products of the sugar factory. A distillery has also been set up in the complex. An electricity generation unit has been set up using waster water from the paper mill and the distillery. The energy generated by the unit is used by the paper mill.

The Warana complex is designed to look after al the basic needs of the workers. They have been provided with living quarters, filtered water, inexpensive electricity, schools, physical training and cultural centres. The sugar administrative building situated in the heart of Warana Nagar, houses the administrative staff of the sugar, distillery and paper factories. The factory is located around 50 meters from this building. The sugarcane for the factory is obtained from roughly 70 villages located in the districts of Kolhapur and Sangli.

The factory for processing milk-related products is situated approximately 3 km from the sugar administrative building. This office of the dairy has stand-alone computers for data processing. Some of the products include pasteurised milk, milk powder, ghee, butter and sreekhand (a sweet dish made of curd (yogurt) and sugar). Approximately 2 metric tonnes of sreekhand is sold in Mumbai daily. The factory processes about 200,000 litres of milk per day collected from the surrounding 176 villages in the Sangli, Satara and Kolhapur.

Warana Grahak Mandal is the largest bazar in Warana with an annual trunover of $7.3 million (approximately Rs.31.4 crore). It has two department stores in War and Wadgaon in addition to 29 retail outlets in the 78 villages spread across Kolhapur and Sangli. Managing the flow of goods like bazar purchases from various factories requires a reliable communications network to book orders and follow up through e-mail. Daily statistics from each of the outlets is also required by the management.

The Goods Processing Society has been set up for processing agricultural goods in packaged form. The raw material for this is obtained from a large number of villages. The machinery has been imported and the installation in nearing completion.

The Mahatma Gandhi Medical Trust, a modern, 200-bed hospital equipped with state-of-the-art technology, is located 10 km from the Sugar Administrative Building.

The main branch of the Warana Co-operative Bank is a two-storied building located about 1 km from the Sugar Administrative Building. It has 20 branches in Kolhapur and Sangli districts. Most of these are within a 30 km radius from the main branch. The annual turnover of this bank is Rs. 30 crore.

The Warana Vibhag Shikshan Mandal is a college spread across 500 sq. mt. It houses the engineering College, Polytechnic and the College of Arts and Science. The Engineering College offes mechanical , chemical, civil and electronics engineering. A course in Science will be offered starting the next academic year. The Engineering has over 1,000 students. The colleges have ample space for the installation of a VSAT that can be utilised by a large number of users of the institute. The Engineering College has about 100 Pentium and 486 based computers which about 50 systems are connected in a LAN. The college authorities plan to have a campus-wide-fibre-optic LAN to facilitate faster communication paid for with their own funds.

To make sure that the work is carried out smoothly the responsibilities of various departments have been identified. The responsibilities of NIC are:

1. Supply the hardware, networking systems and associated software;
2. Design, supply and establish communication infrastructure with Internet access;
3. Install and configure and Intranet;
4. Provide site preparation guidelines;
5. Design, develop and implement the application software; and
6. Provide training on a software.

The responsibilities of the Maharashtra government are:

1. Bar code products/items at Warana Bazar
2. Design and prepare the multipurpose identification number card with hologram and bar code for a villager’s database; and
3. Purchase the GIS.

The responsibilities of the Warana Vibhag Shikshan Mandal are:

1. To provide sites and site preparation;
2. Provide 10 phone lines at the Sugar Administrative Building and one at each IT centre and facilitation booth;
3. Enter and validate all data;
4. Recruit technical manpower for managing the centres; and
5. Provide necessary infrastructure support to the staff tour to the sites.

Two committees have been established to oversee implementation of the project, a Project Co-ordination Committee and a Project Implementation Committee. The Project Co-ordination Committee has responsibility of planning, designing and coordination implementation of the project. The project implementation committee looks after day-to-day tasks and ensures speeds implementation.

With a view to providing complete connectivity to the 70 villages in the region, a three-tier structure was implemented. The Sugar Administrative Building (SAB) an the Engineering College form the main hub centre, the first tier. The business centre (6) and the IT centres (6) at the next level and the Facilitation Booths (70) provide connectivity down to the village level.

The SAB was selected as the hub for the business centre. Facilitation Booths have access to the SAB and the business centres through a dial-up network. To provide a rugged and reliable network, a high-speed wireless LAN is provided at the business centres. The VSAT and Mast for omni-directional antenna of the wireless LAN has been installed on the SAB. A high speed IPA VSAT is connected to a hub for Internet access. The wireless LAN technology has been used to provide Intranet/Internet connectivity to the business centtres. All existing machines are integrated in a LAN environment with two additional NT servers and four Win-95 clients. A proxy server is also installed which act as a firewall.

The business centre sites inlcuedes the dairy, Warana Bazaar, WAGPCOS, Mahatma Gandhi Hospital, and the Warana Co-operative Bank. The business centres access the wireless LAN via a unidirectional antenna installed on the rooftop of each of the centres. A wireless LAN is set up a the centres which can communicate with the central V+SAT installed on the Sugar Administrative Office. The bank is also connected to the networks through a unidirectional anteena located on the roof the main branch. Six villages at a distance of nearly 10- km from Warana Nagar have been identified as sites for the IT centres. The idea is to provide IT facilities as close to the villages as possible.

The sugar factory is actively involved with farmers in cultivation cutting, testing, transportation of the crop. These activities ensure an information exchange in the factory and farmers which are manpower intensive. A management information system for sugarcane cultivation developed by NIC leads to speeds an accurate data exchange between the factory and the farmers using the facilitation booths. The land records application permits villagers to view print extracts using data from a land database stored on a compact disc, or from the tehasil site right at their village booth. Dairy is the mainstay of the complex. The computerisation of dairy activities will permit milk collection and analysis to be made available to villagers at the booth as son it is generated.

The Warana Bazaar (Warana Grahak Mandal) is a cooperative with the largest departments store in Warana. A bar code-based computerised inventory system is being developed bazaar.

The IT centres have been set up with a view to providing computer-based education facilities to the village children. AUTNIC, a computer-based self-learning and testing aid is providing at the IT centres to support the course curriculum.

Over 50 software professionals have been involved full-time in application development since June 1998. Each team handling an application has been interacting regularly with their Warana counterprts, visiting the Warana site, discussing and finalising the specifications, the implementation strategy and delivering as per the approved strategy signed and agreed upon by NIC, the government of Maharashtra, and the Warana Vibhag Shikshan Mandal.

The software developed for Warana is the single largest set of applications developed in the client server/web-based environment in Marathi. The software has been delivered complete with detailed operational manuals in Marathi.

Extensive training on the applications and administration of the network has been provided to the Warana users on site as well as Pune. Selected teaching staff of the engineering college are trained to manage the network. The training aims at creating an awareness in the villagers regarding the utility and benefits of the state-of-art equipment made available at Warana. It has also provided the required skill level to the operators to handle the machines and assis the villagers. The project has proved helpful in generating employment opportunities for the lcoal population.

(The writer is Deputy Director General of National Informatics Centre, New Delhi, Excerpted from "A Wired Village: The Warana Experiment", From Information And Communication Technology in Rural Development: Case Studies from India, Edited by Subhash Bhatnagar and Robert ‘Schware, brought out by the World Bank Institute)