Digital Connect With Rural India

People in marriage processions in villages used to walk through rough paths, spoiling their wedding finery on the way. No wonder, people were unwilling to marry their daughters into the villages. Despite India being home to one of the largest and densest road networks in the world, close to 300 million Indians still lack access to all-weather roads. The Indian villages are waiting to be connected with the urban hinterlands and the age old issues of inaccessibility to water, power and sanitation still stand unresolved.

However, with Government of India's highly ambitious ‘Digital India campaign’, India's top industrialists have pledged to invest a sum of Rs 4.5 lakh crore with an aim to upgrade the overall digital infrastructure of the country. Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries to put forth Rs 2.5 crore alone. Others in the list are Bharti Airtel, Aditya Birla group, Vedanta Resources and Reliance ADAG. The big promise gives hopes to many, that India too can become a high speed internet territory, citizens will be empowered through wireless mobile networks at public spaces. It is also believed that connectivity can bring the desired change, such as bridging the gap between rural and urban India, building smart-cities, boosting e-commerce and skilled youth. For example Google recently announced its plan to provide public Wi-Fi in 400 railway stations while Microsoft stated that it would help connect 500,000 villages to low-cost broadband internet.

Even the global internet and technological giants like Microsoft, Google and Facebook are putting in individual effort to increase the bandwidth in India. They are designing distinct projects like ‘White Spaces’, Loom Project’ and ‘Free Basics’ or ‘Internet.org’ respectively and more, so that the people who speak three dozen diverse languages, are spatially dispersed and majority of whom are illiterate, can connect with each other too. The project is expected to bring in massive job opportunities, especially for individuals in the Information Technology sector (IT), almost a number as huge as 18 lakhs.

 Like for instance, Google announced its plan to provide public Wi-Fi in 400 railway stations while Microsoft stated that it would help connect 500,000 villages to low-cost broadband internet. Along with the global brands even the Indian brands like BSNL, Bharat Broadband and Satellite Internet and AirJaldi.net are also trying to tap the ‘emerging Indian market’. Villages of India are no longer considered a downgraded version of urban India. In fact it is seen as a fresh ground with no preceding prejudices, to begin with. Educating about rights, providing better employment opportunity and improving medical facilities, everything is possible through this.

Especially, with creation of ‘e-Choupal’, a classic example of out-of-the-box thinking, customization, community welfare and leveraging technology for brand building. Like always, it will always be difficult for global brands to connect with rural India as the local nuances, regional disparities, cultural diversity, terrain and distribution issues all play a significant role in marketers reaching out to rural India. Hence the key is to connect corporate objectives with the aspirations and expectations of the people. The rural youth in the recent years has started and are increasingly becoming the face of change, brands are slowly letting go off the major brand image to express the consumer sentiment.

However, there are a multitude of challenges in the path. According to a report published by Firstpost, India has 979.21 million telephone subscribers (as of January 2015) - out of this, 952.34 million are wireless. Soon in the future, with the ever increasing demand for mobile connections, an acute shortage of spectrum is bound to happen. Further, a spectrum crunch would result in traffic congestion and frequent call drops, a situation which has already quite common.

If these challenges can be conquered, slowly and gradually, the dreams of the so far deprived youth in rural India can be realized. For instance, the right technology and new age connectivity can connect medical practitioner to the remotest part of the country, it can enable delivery of education or financial services, energy or transportation. India is one of those deserving countries where the potential of the ‘Internet of Things’ is really high.

 Developing digital infrastructure will not only help in technological advancement here but bring a large so untapped population on the same page as the rest of the world. The telecommunication connectivity with rural India will not only boost e-commerce or literacy, it will certainly enhance the dialogue between the citizens and government. Activities like banking, providing subsidies, selling crops and other agro-products would become easy and efficient for the rural people. It will also positively the human resource development, GDP of the nation and strengthen democracy. After all, a well-connected nation is the first important step towards building a well-governed nation.