Dissecting the rural information society & economy

On August 3, 2017, DEF in partnership with Qualcomm’s Wireless Reach organised an event to celebrate a year of SoochnaPreneur.  The event, SoochnaPreneurship 2017, hosted a workshop that invited Rural Information & Digital Entrepreneurs (CSC VLEs, SoochnaPreneurs, e-Mitras and others) to interact with experts and resource persons. Later in the day, a consultation was held on the theme ‘Rural Information Society & Economy: Leveraging Citizen Needs through Information Enterprises, Digital Skills & Entrepreneurship’. The various Digital Entrepreneurs who participated in the event represented the states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Haryana.

As much as 67 per cent of India’s population lives in rural India; and one billion Indians do not have access to the Internet. More than 300 million identified individuals fall under the category of below poverty line (BPL) who, by definition, earn less than a dollar a day. This is the same share of population that directly depends on access to government schemes or entitlements for some of their most basic rights. Realising the need to serve India’s rural, remote and marginalised population with relevant information about government services, schemes and entitlements in a timely manner, Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF), in partnership with Qualcomm, initiated the SoochnaPreneur programme in April 2016. Soochnapreneur is a rural entrepreneurship-based model that aims at empowering youth in the villages of India to sustain their livelihood by providing information to those living in information darkness.

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) Chairman RS Sharma gave the key note address while Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship Jyotsna Sitling, Qualcomm India President Larry Paulson, and CEO of CSC SPV Dr. Dinesh Tyagi were special addressors.

The consultation was followed by a panel discussion between Vice-President & Principal Officer of CSC e-Goverance Services India Ltd Rishi Ra Singh, Financial Inclusion & Digital Development Specialist at USAID India Mukesh Sadana, Associate Professor in the Department of Management Studies at the Indian Institute of Technology – Delhi P. Vigneswara Ilavarasan, and Director of Business Development at the All India Society for Electronics and Computer Technology Abhishek Pandit. The panel, moderated by DEF Founder-Director Osama Manzar, discussed the scope and challenges in rural information society and economy.

SoochnaPreneurship also felicitated the 10 best Soochnapreneurs out of the pool of 100 SoochnaPreneurs who are working in different parts of India.