Warana Unwired

1. With an Examination of Rural PC Kiosks Warana Unwired Kentaro Toyama Assistant Managing Director Microsoft Research India Based on work with Rajesh Veeraraghavan TCS Excellence in Computer Science January 9, 2008 – Pune, India

2. Lead Researcher Rajesh Veeraraghavan Collaborators Kentaro Toyama Ken Keniston (MIT) Vibhore Goyal Sean Blagsvedt Nimmi Rangaswamy Interns Naga Yasodhar (Cognizant) Renee Kuriyan (UC Berkeley) Savita Bailur (London School of Economics) People Photo: Rajesh Veeraraghavan Rajesh visiting a farmer’s family in Warana

3. Outline: Warana Unwired Rural PC Kiosks Warana Background Initial Ethnography The Intervention Results Discussion

4. Outline: Warana Unwired Rural PC Kiosks Warana Background Initial Ethnography The Intervention Results Discussion

5. Rural Kiosks Definition (for the purposes of this presentation): • Rural center with PC as the focus of services • Typically run as a small enterprise • Socio-economic improvement as a goal Photo: Kentaro Toyama ITC e-Choupal kiosk in Kodia, Madhya Pradesh

6. Rural Kiosks A “bouquet of services” to generate value and revenue

7. Methodology Data sources: • Extensive kiosk surveys • 300 kiosks, 1 year so far, 4 times each, 5 customers, 1 operator per kiosk • Ethnographic studies • Longitudinal kiosk life-cycle • In-depth interviews with kiosk agencies • At least six organizations • Over 30 site visits in India and Africa • Discussions with third-party observers • Literature in journals, books, web sites, whitepapers

8. Methodology Projects examined: • n-Logue (Tamil Nadu) • Drishtee (North India) • ITC e-choupal (Madhya Pradesh) • TARAhaat (Uttar Pradesh) • MSSRF (Pondicherry) • Dhan / SARI (Tamil Nadu) • Akshaya (Kerala) • World Corps (Andhra Pradesh) • Bhoomi / Comat (Karnataka) • Rural e-Seva (Andhra Pradesh) • Warana WDV (Maharashtra) • Datamation (Delhi) • Etc.

9. Kiosk Business a Challenge Kiosk in Tamil Nadu Rural kiosk in Tamil Nadu Srinivasan, Janaki (2004) The Effects of e-Governance Implementation on Women: A Study of the Sustainable Access in Rural India (SARI) Project, Madurai. Masters Thesis, Indian Institute of Information Technology.

10. Kiosk Business a Challenge Photo: Kentaro Toyama 12-year-old boy taking typing lessons in Retawadi, Maharashtra Vigyan Ashram monthly report (Nov 2004)

11. Kiosk Business a Challenge Photo: Kentaro Toyama Proud father of printshop and kiosk owner in Sirsa, Haryana Private e-mail communication

12. Sustainability is nearly impossible! Various published articles

13. Difficult to Break Even Dhawan, Vivek (2004) Critical Success Factors for Rural ICT Projects in India, Masters Thesis, IIT-Bombay

14. Even surviving kiosks are supported by other business Microsoft kiosk survey (2005)

15. Outline: Warana Unwired Rural PC Kiosks Warana Background Initial Ethnography The Intervention Results Discussion

16. Agriculture in India Photos: Rajesh Veeraraghavan Over 60% of population earn living through agriculture Mostly small and marginal farmers with 1-3 acres of land Typical income of <$2 per day

17. Tatyasaheb Kore (1914-1994) Warana is within Kolhapur district, Maharashtra Warana Nagar • Warana, Maharashtra, is a subdistrict of Kolhapur (second wealthiest rural district in India) • Sugarcane cooperatives and refineries • first one in 1959 • now numbering 25

18. “Warana Wired Village Project” • Warana’s main cooperative: • 75 villages • 50000 farmers • 25,000km2 • 1998: Asia’s first project • to “Bridge the Digital Divide” • 54 PC kiosks in 54 villages • Cost: Rs.2.5 crores (US$625,000) • 50% central gov’t • 40% state gov’t • 10% cooperative Warana sugarcane processing plant

19. “Warana Wired Village Project” Factory FTP PC Landline phone FTP PC enabled Kiosks Standard PC network FTP Warana Farmer DB Weigh stations WWVP technical infrastructure

20. Original Goals of WWVP http://www.mah.nic.in/warana/#About Wired Villages Bring Warana Nagar on NICNET [and Internet] Create database of villagers on various socio-economic aspects Provide Tele-education to both Primary and Higher Educational Institutes Facilities such as remote health service (tele-medicine), public grievances and redressal will be provided through this booth Provide following facilities: - Computer based education - Open University access (IGNOU)

21. Outline: Warana Unwired Rural PC Kiosks Warana Background Initial Ethnography The Intervention Results Discussion

22. Summer, 2005: two months Participant observation Structured interviews 200 farmers (users and non-users) 15 kiosk operators 3 cooperative leaders 5 cooperative staff Technical analysis Survey 47 kiosks Self-reported usage statistics Kiosk logging One all-hands meeting of kiosk operators Ethnography and Data Collection Interviewing in the field Joint work with Ken Keniston

23. Seven Years Later PC network still active Farmers visiting kiosks General pride in system

24. Were goals being met? Bring Warana Nagar on NICNET [and Internet] Create database of villagers on various socio-economic aspects Provide Tele-education to both Primary and Higher Educational Institutes Facilities such as remote health service (tele-medicine), public grievances and redressal will be provided through this booth Provide following facilities: - Computer based education - Open University access (IGNOU)

25. Why not…? Technology • No local language interface • Plans to localize exceeded budget • Connectivity poor • Dial-up, no more than 10kbps • Round-trip time for data still two days Infrastructural • Centers not designed for students, patients, etc. Social / political / economic • Lack of budget to fulfill expectations • Farmers’ awareness of PC function limited • Farmers’ need for Internet/multimedia functionality limited • Interest in PC and Internet existed, however • Lack of training and qualified trainers

26. Actual Use WWVP village PC kiosk Internal account MIS: • Register land • Issue harvesting permits • Sell fertilizer through credit • Query quantity of sugarcane harvested • 10 times a year for farmer • Small matrix of numerical data

27. Mounting Challenges PCs not in best condition High maintenance cost • At any time, a few in disrepair Intermittent power Network flakey • Low-quality dial-up PC not optimally used Cooperative considering discontinuation of system

28. The Design Problem Can we preserve the functionality of the existing PC-based system while making the entire system cheaper and more effective?

29. Outline: Warana Unwired Rural PC Kiosks Warana Background Initial Ethnography The Intervention Results Discussion

30. Warana Unwired! Warana… SMS-enabled mobile phones PC-based kiosks

31. Original PC-Based Set-Up Factory FTP PC Landline phone FTP PC-enabled kiosks Standard PC network FTP Warana Farmer DB Weigh stations

32. GSM/CDMA SMS network New Mobile-Based Set-Up Factory SMS PC SMS SMS-enabled phones Standard PC network SMS Warana Farmer DB Weigh stations

33. Implementation Begun October 2006 Naga spent 1.5 months at location SMS Server implemented at processing center Based on SMS Server Toolkit [Goyal and Blagsvedt] 7 pilot villages and 7 kiosks PC-based system left in place, but kiosk operators asked to use only if necessary Under auspices of cooperative’s managing director Involved IT manager at WWVP Questions Technical: Can SMS-based system be implemented in this environment? Usability: Is SMS a viable medium for farmers? Social: Will farmers transition to use? Inhibiting factors? Financial: What are actual costs of system? Other: Any adverse impacts? Pilot Experiment

34. Outline: Warana Unwired Rural PC Kiosks Warana Background Initial Ethnography The Intervention Results Discussion

35. Data Collected Software logs of… • SMS Server • Central database Survey of kiosks • 7 pilot (mobile) • 7 non-pilot (PC) Interviews with kiosk operators Interviews with farmers

36. Results Implementation and Usage System required one month of tweaking in field to customize. Running continuously since October 2006. • 24-hour access SMS Server requires reboot once a month. 1238 unique farmer requests served in first three months. • Slightly more than expected number, based on statistics from PC-based system 80% of requests are about sugarcane output. Response time is generally on order of seconds.

37. Warana Unwired– Estimated Cost Savings Costs Annual cost of PC system Current system Potential savings: 1 million Rupees per year, over 54 villages ($25,000) Achievable with GPRS or with SMS discounts ($30,000 savings per year)

38. Good Advantage of mobiles Mobility Battery power Fast, 24-hour access Potential democratization of access Bad SMS not suitable for all queries or data Land registration not implemented via SMS Data-availability dependent on server Minor error rates (3.2%) due to SMS unavailability In all cases, a repeat query solved the problem. Per-SMS cost accrues to farmer Other Issues

39. Qualitative Results – Solution Truly Mobile

40. Farmer Responses Farmer from Satve village (one of pilots) Initial disbelief turns to excitement: “The information is exact and it is very good.” Farmer from Angali village (not in pilot) “I saw messages are coming on the mobile phone. There is no problem. So where is the question of success? Let us have it, also.”

41. Outline: Warana Unwired Rural PC Kiosks Warana Background Initial Ethnography The Intervention Results Discussion

42. Rural kiosks Heeks, 1999 Jhunjhunwala, 2000 Keniston, 2002 Roman, 2003 Pal et al., 2004 Kumar, 2004 Toyama et al., 2004 Nedevschi et al., 2005 Srinivasan, 2005 Kuriyan et al., 2006 Rajalekshmi, 2006 Ali and Bailur, 2007 Bailur, 2007 Etc. ICT for agriculture eSagu e-Choupal aAQUA Advantage of mobile phones Duncombe & Heeks, 1999 Donner, 2005 The Economist, 2005 (“The Real Digital Divide”) Jensen, 2007 SMS-based solutions Banks 2005 Goyal & Blagsvedt, 2005 Related Work Veeraraghavan, R., N. Yasodhar, K. Toyama. Warana Unwired: Replacing PCs with Mobile Phones in a Rural Sugarcane Cooperative, in Proc. IEEE/ACM Int’l Conf on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD2007), 2007.

43. Discussion To our knowledge, Warana Unwired is the first project to replace an existing ICT4D PC-based network with a mobile-based system. Expensive many-PC system replaced with an affordable single-PC system Is this development? • Minor impact on farmers’ lives (e.g., savings of $10 per year) • Cost savings to sugarcane cooperative (e.g., $25,000 per year) Shouldn’t overstate case for mobile phones Future work: Simple IT systems for agriculture cooperatives

44. Thank you! Photo: Rajesh Veeraraghavan http://research.microsoft.com/~rajeshv/warana.htm rajesh@berkeley.edu ; kentoy@microsoft.com