Internet Reaches Rural India

India is home to more than 600,000 remote villages, cut off from the urban populace. Increasingly the government is looking for a way to reach these areas which account for more than half of the population. The government has taken the course of technology to provide a solution. "It is time for our IT roots to go further inland and make sure those areas which are tribal, rural and far-off geographically are brought ambit of the IT revolution" stated Sachin Pilot, the minister of state for communications and information technology.

India is presently home to a sharp digital divide. While the coast has the world's second fastest growing mobile market, it is lagging in internet connectivity. The IT revolution that India has experienced has predominantly reached the better off urban areas and bypassed the remote rural ones. However, with the urban markets mostly saturated at this point, telecom industries have now taken interest in Indian villages.

By 2014, India wants to connect 160 million Indians to high speed internet in rural towns. The country is hoping to bridge the digital divide since farmers benefit greatly from the internet services. By having internet connectivity they are able to access agricultural data and negotiate better prices, thus saving money. But, it is not just the farmers who have witnessed the lifting impact of the internet. Experts have long argued that technology, and in this case the internet, is known to help provide public services such as education, health and agriculture to the most remote places. If it is implemented correctly, it could open up markets and connect businesses benefiting India's rural societies.

-Gabrielle Gurian

SOURCE: BBC NEWS

Rural Poverty Report

Recently the UN agency, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) published the 2011 Rural Poverty Report. This report is a comprehensive analysis of how many rural people live in poverty, who they are, and what challenges they face in the coming years (among other things). Here are some of the report’s key points:

“Despite improvements over the past 10 years that have lifted more than 350 million rural people out of extreme poverty, global poverty remains a massive and predominantly rural phenomenon – with 70 per cent of the developing world’s 1.4 billion extremely poor people living in rural areas.”

“The overall rate of extreme poverty in rural areas of developing countries has dropped from 48 per cent to 34 per cent, led by dramatic gains in East Asia…But extreme poverty still persists in rural areas of Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.”

“It is estimated that food production must increase 70% in the next four decades to feed a projected population of nine billion.”

A number of initiatives have taken place to ensure food safety, including some nations buying land in developing countries and helping farmers mitigate and adapt to climate change. Additionally, IFAD’s president Kananyo Nwanze claims that more emphasis needs to be placed on helping rural women, who make up 60-70% of the farming community. One obstacle that will be particularly difficult to overcome is that more and more youth around the world are unwilling to become farmers, and instead want to move to cities. On one hand it is good to encourage households to rely less on farming as a source of income (as it will help alleviate poverty), but on the other hand, that shifts people away from farming at a time when food production is most needed.

The only way forward, as the report states, is that “smallholder farmers, small enterprises, governments and large multinational corporations investing in the agro-food chain, all need a concerted approach to improve the livelihoods of those one billion people living in extreme poverty.”

The above video is one story that represents the challenges stated in the 2011 Rural Poverty Report.

-Clare Ortblad

SOURCE: BBC News, IFAD