Thikri or Obaidullaganj, telephony services reach all corners of MP even if basic amenities don't
But it boasts of a telephone mast tower that connects one to anywhere in the world and the nearest district headquarters at 20 paise per call. Through which high school dropout Hasan communicates with his relatives in the Middle East, often discussing fresh investments. And one of his business plans is to vend mobile phones for truckers on the highway near his village.
Get to know Deviprasad Malviya, patwari of Holka number 25 in Raisen district of Madhya Pradesh, the only Class IV revenue official in the country using a mobile phone to keep in touch with farmers in his area. Or Junaid Ahmed and his father Ansar Ahmed from the same tehsil, who use mobile and land-line phones to run their stamp vending business.
In Goharganj, 60 km south of Bhopal, several progressive farmers have mobile phones to keep in touch with revenue official Malviya and their families from their farms. However, in cities like Bhopal, Indore and Gwalior, mobiles are passe as people deck their cars and bikes with AirTel sets that come with a Code Division Multiple Access (cdma) transceiver to keep in touch at a fraction of air time rates.
Even as 'Cyber' Babu Naidu in Andhra Pradesh gives in to pressure and shelves his ambitious apvan (AP Value-Added Network) electronic governance project, information technology has provided Madhya Pradesh with a way out of static development. Listed low even among the bimaru states (Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, MP and Bihar), the state is now the only one in the country where telephone connections are available on demand. It is also the only state where basic telecom services are provided by the private sector. The operator, Sunil Mittal-owned Bharti Telenet, has already laid 2,000 km of fibreoptic cables along the Indore-Bhopal-Gwalior backbone, with Jabalpur and Raipur to be connected soon. This adds to the 16,000 km of optical fibre backbone already available to the state.
In MP, the days of long queues, indefinite waiting periods and currying favour with the local Member of Parliament for a telephone connection are long over. Competition from the private sector has forced the Department of Telecommunications (dot) to put up banners in public places like petrol pumps and cinema halls that scream: 'Phones available on demand in this area.' Even opening an std/isd/pco booth need not be a privilege doled out by politicians to the unemployed youth as AirTel offers are going abegging.
MP was also the first state to start Internet services back in August 1998 immediately after the National Infotech Policy was announced. Over 20,000 villages have 15 mast towers with single telephones. All tehsils and certain smaller villages have free Net access through dot lines-just dial 1721 or 1722 to ride the information highway.
Remote areas like Obaidullaganj now have computer training centres and it is not unusual to find high school students in rural MP surfing the Net. Over the next two years, Net penetration is likely to be one per 5,000 as the state's newly created Information Technology Task Force, headed by Professor Yashpal, aims to open cyber cafes or cyber dhabas in 75 villages by 2003.
'We have heard about Chandrababu Naidu's Cyberabad for so long now that Andhra Pradesh may appear to be the only state doing something. But, while Naidu has moved on to develop it as a commercial venture, in MP, information technology is aimed at directly benefiting the masses,' says Devesh Pant, an IT professional working with the government-owned cmc Ltd. And direct benefit may mean different things to different people. As the mobile, dot and Bharti-AirTel networks expand in the state over the next year, truckers will carry telephone sets connecting them with their head offices or nearest towns to deal with an emergency.
Compared to Naidu's apvan, which was meant to be the first commercial online provider of government services, MP has decided to take infotech to the grassroots. All district headquarters in the state are connected through the government network nicnet and at least 20 departments of the state government use computers and e-mail extensively. 'Improvement in delivery of services, wider dissemination and easier access to information for underprivileged sections and responsiveness in governance can be achieved through IT,' says chief minister Digvijay Singh.
The Department of Public Grievances keeps computerised records of all public complaints and every entry is assigned a code quoting which the complainant can remain posted about its status. The preliminary report of the Infotech Task Force indicates that for a one-time investment of Rs 200 crore, most villages and panchayats in the state can be connected to existing public and private sector exchanges using the wideband cdma Wireless Loop (wll) technology.
Digvijay also has ambitious plans of developing Bhopal and Indore as Digital Cities by 2000, with broadband network for commercial and domestic use. The broadband network will provide basic telephony, fax, e-mail, Net, video conferencing and interactive TV services. Within a year, subscribers in these two cities may be able to use these facilities on a single cable connection. The state government hopes it will be able to attract direct investment of around Rs 216 crore from the private sector over the next two years. Bharti Telenet has already invested Rs 150 crore. It is slated to go up to Rs 900 crore by the time the Raipur-Jabalpur backbone is in place.
Still, it would be presumptuous to say that the progress of infotech in MP has been an unblemished success. Especially in a state where even basic necessities like drinking water and primary health centres are absent in many villages, ensuring access to telephones and the Net is bound to invite criticism. 'It is typical of development planning these days to jump to the next stage even before completing the basics of the previous,' says Gurishanker Shejwar, leader of the opposition in the MP Assembly.
The state has also had to battle against several odds. Further development of available technology is proving difficult as most softwares are in English and the lingua franca of the state is Hindi. In some cases, the state has been successful in leading the horse to the pond but not in making it drink. Goharganj High School, for instance, has a full-fledged computer department with at least five terminals for 70 students. But in typical bureaucratic fashion, the essential input is not yet in place-in this case the operational software.Similarly, the technology park built by the state government in Indore is arguably of the highest standards but has yet to kindle interest among buyers.
The worst danger of being cyber-savvy is probably waiting in the wings. In this haven of lotteries, schoolboys and teenagers in Goharganj addicted to sweepstakes have only to discover that the Net can be the most useful ally in getting lottery results, and the days are not far when PCs would be available in paan shops. And MP will have to learn to live with that in due course.