THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, 9 December 2006 — Rosa is 106 years old, but she isn’t, like others of her age, content to stay confined inside the walls of her home. She has a verve rarely seen at this age and it is this verve that makes her different.

It was popular Indian film star Mammootty, an icon in Malayalam cinema, who sparked the interest that has given new zest to Rosa’s life. A chance viewing of Mammootty on the television screen making a pitch for the latest revolution in Kerala made Rosa sit up and take notice before becoming a willing member of this revolution.

“Don’t be left out while a silent revolution is taking place in Kerala”, was the advertisement that the granny found too irresistible to pass up. Rosa accepted the actor’s call to join.

In the twilight of her life, Rosa is one of nearly seven million Keralites who have embraced personal computing to make the state fully e-literate by the end of next year. The drive toward personal computing is part of a project titled “Akshaya: Bridging the Digital Divide,” which was kicked off by President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam four years back.

Akshaya in Malayalam means “perpetual prosperity”. Considering that computing and the Internet are here to stay and offer a range of opportunities, the name seems appropriate.

The government has already declared Muslim-dominated Malappuram as Kerala’s first e-literate district, which means at least one family member of all the families in the district is computer literate and can navigate the World Wide Web. Like the land reform of the 50s and the literacy campaign of the 80s, Malappuram’s stature as fully capable of embracing “perpetual prosperity” has become yet another milestone for the southern Indian state.

“Our aim is to transform Kerala into a 100-percent e-empowered knowledge society in a few years’ time,” said Akshaya’s director, T.K. Manzoor.

This growing acceptance of technology has allowed families to be united in cyberspace. Many of Keralites live and work in the Gulf region, and Malappuram is one of the largest exporters of Keralite workers. At best, they return home for annual visits. Sometimes the visits are less frequent.

“Gulf workers often come home only once every two or three years,” said Manzoor.

But with the Internet and increasing computer literacy, India’s “Gulf parents” can increase their interactions with their families.

In Kerala’s remote Karuvarakkundu village, four children at the local Akshaya center converse with their parents on a chat service provided by Akshaya. Their parents, Ibrahim and Mariam, both live in Jeddah. Ibrahim is a cab driver and, along with his wife, can’t afford to send his children to the local Indian school. The kids live with other family members in Kerala. “Many families here meet their breadwinners online,” said Manzoor. “There are varied services offered to the farming community, increase in e-commerce, and many online bill-payment services. But what makes us proud is that we provide a platform for separated families to meet.”

Today in Malappuram, at least one member of every family in this poor, rural district is computer savvy. There are about 500 village resource centers that offer computer and Internet access. The rest of Kerala is catching up.

Akshaya bagged the prestigious Golden Nica award last year for digital communities, along with accolades from UNESCO and the UNDP for being the largest community-based initiative in India aimed at spreading e-literacy, and digitally empowering local communities with skills that can help reduce unemployment.

“Akshaya is basically an ICT project,” said Manzoor. “But it also touches issues in distinct disciplines, such as entrepreneurship development, expansion of infrastructure, capacity building and empowerment of women.”

The campaign received overwhelming response with schoolchildren taking pledges at school assemblies to create awareness among elders like Rosa. Women’s participation was also remarkable.

“In the state like Kerala where a large majority of women are homemakers and as a whole considered an idle human resource, the experience in Akshaya explicitly indicates an opportunity for empowering women by creating village-level opportunities in a structured manner,” Manzoor says.

When Akshaya organized an IT expo in Malappuram recently, global brands were queuing up displaying their products and services and entrepreneurs got an opportunity to deal directly with vendors and cut out the middlemen. It provided opportunity to local business executives to procure equipment without losing bulk-purchase pricing. It was the first experience of its kind in the state.

Recently, Akshaya linked up with UNESCO, the UNDP, Australia’s Queensland University of Science and Technology and the University of Adelaide for content development in local languages. Kannur district has been identified for the implementation of the pilot project and research has already been commenced by a team of experts.

The project, titled “Action Research and Local Content Production,” will be completed within 18 months. “The tie-up with these international institutions is a clear indication of the global recognition of the project,” Manzoor said.

Last month, the 34th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Telecommunications and Information Working Group meeting, held in Auckland, New Zealand, adopted Akshaya’s model in rural projects of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation member countries.

Apart from households, the project now reaches out to inmates of jails in the state. The computer training, being currently given to 1,000 prisoners in the Kannur Central Jail under the project is being extended to other jails as well.

Akshaya achieved another remarkable feat last month when a tribal hamlet in the northern Kannur district became fully e-literate. Kambhari was declared Kerala’s first tribal settlement to achieve total computer literacy.

The computer is all the rage in Kambhari deep inside the Sreekantapuram forest. “Though the literacy level is low, the people here have shown great enthusiasm in learning different applications. We have several plans to make their daily grind easier with the help of e-power,” Manzoor said. Hopefully, in a few years’ time, Kerala will have built not only a computer literate society, but also more opportunity and wealth for the people of the state.

Spreading E-Literacy

Akshaya aims at bridging the digital divide by spreading e-literacy among citizens and providing sustainable Internet access to all people in the rural southern state of Kerala. The aim is to set up around 3,000 broadband Internet access spots across the state.

Kerlala’s Malappuram district now has a hybrid-connectivity infrastructure, a mix of wireless technologies like with multiple overlaps that allow multiple connectivity routes. The network supports the implementation of e-governance initiatives, community development interventions, e-commerce and information dissemination.

Each Akshaya center is run by private entrepreneurs, catering to some 2,500 to 3,000 families. The program does more than offer access: It imparts basic skill sets for operating a computer to at least one person in all the 6.4 million families in the state. Akshaya is the largest rural e-literacy training project in the world. The locations are strategically planned and spatially distributed to cater to the people in even the remotest parts.

The program works on a public-private participation model. It also ensures a high level of involvement of the village councils at the grass-roots level. Each center is equipped with five to 10 computers, a printer, scanner, a webcam and broadband connectivity.

There is local content available in the local language, Malayalam, helping to overcome the language barrier for getting information online. This content includes a wide range of topics, such as education, career development, agriculture, health, law and justice.

Akshaya is a low cost, user friendly, voice, data and video connectivity model that can be replicated across India and other developing countries.