Among the villages in the former French colony of Pondicherry that are hotspots in the Information Village Project (IVP) started by the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) is Embalam.

The village has a population of 7,000, with 600 of every 1,000 families living below the poverty line. In a small room, four computers share space with back-up batteries and rudimentary furniture. A group of 15 women—some of them from the caste of Dalits—operate the computers, collate and present data. They speak no English and have not studied beyond high school.

But they man one of the 12 spokes—called Knowledge Centres—of an information and communication technology (ICT) enabled rural upliftment programme. Says 37 year-old Usha Rani, who wraps up housework before reporting for voluntary work at the centre, “The Knowledge Centre has become a place everybody flocks to. Villagers now access information on all kinds of situations and problems—weather, crops, livestock, health, everything. We have even mediated disputes.” The IVP’s 12 Knowledge Centres cover 40 villages. Each centre is inter-linked via wired and wireless communications devices.

According to a survey in five villages covered by the project, people benefit from securing information on employment, crops, fish markets, loans, dairy farming, real estate, veterinary services, weather and wave-height information, bus service and power outage schedules, exam results, and public address announcements. One example of a valuable application has been the availability of the list of people below the poverty line secured and uploaded by the nodal team at Villianur.

The Embalam women report the varying prices of grain in government and private markets. Farmers now get the best possible price. Every household in Embalam now has an insurance policy—a national life insurance scheme subsidized by the central government of which the villagers had no knowledge before.

The project, which began in 1998, selected Pondicherry because it had certain initial advantages. As per the 2001 census, 89 percent of men and 74 percent of women are literate in the Pondicherry region, which is spread over 492 sq km and has a population of nearly a million. The area already had a reasonable telecom infrastructure. The rest is easy. “Rural women take to technology like fish take to water,” says J. Gobu, a scientist at the project headquarters in Villianur. “We have to make sure the information is dynamic and not just academic. It has to be user-driven and gender-friendly. The villagers decide what they wish to do.” Though the project is supported by the International Development Research Centre and the Canadian International Development Agency, financial viability is a limiting factor.

The project has also caused a major social shift.

Declares a volunteer in the Embalam centre, Amirtham, 35, and a mother of four daughters, “The men in our community first looked at us with jealousy. Then it became envy. When we first started, we would automatically stand up when a man entered this room. Not anymore—we are more confident and respected. That’s the way I want to raise my daughters.”

The power of connectivity has also widened their horizon. The women of Embalam recently corresponded with the president of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, Brian Albert. Says Amirtham, “When we saw the World Trade Towers fall on television, we felt awful. We wrote to Brian and told him how bad we felt. He in turn wrote back. We also urged him not to go to war with Iraq.”