Women Run Internet Kiosks In God’s e-District

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: Muthu Fathima, mother of eight, is drawing an Alladin lamp e-greeting card for her husband in Saudi Arabia. Twenty years after dropping out of high school, she is clicking on the mouse at an Akshaya community internet kiosk in Malappuram district.

Muslim-dominated Malappuram is high on population and low in literacy. Half of it seems to live on Gulf remittances, the other half in poverty. Its BSNL landline connectivity is so poor that, according to a study by Escotel, the number of phones (mainly mobiles) exceeds the number of people.

It is this district that has lifted the purdah for its first steps up the e-learning curve. About 560 e-centres dot the hills, with 4,000 PCs and scanners. Malappuram lays claim to being the world’s first rural district to achieve 100 per cent household e-literacy (one computer-literate person per family).

The state has spent only Rs 3.5 crore on this project, according to Aruna Sundarajan, IT Secretary, Kerala. Local entrepreneurs invested about Rs 1.5 lakh each. After training 6.5 lakh people (10 computer class capsules at Rs 60 each, sponsored by panchayats), the entrepreneurs have recouped their capital.

Surprisingly, many of these are women, brought up on stiff taboos against ‘usury’. Now, having got a taste of cyberspace profits, a woman entrepreneur confessed to keeping her e-centre open till 11 pm for giving classes to autorickshaw drivers returning from work.

“Downloading computer designs fetches embroidery better prices,” says a tailor, as little Ashraff, sitting on his mother’s lap, sees his expatriate father on the webcam.

The project has hopped its way from the policymakers’ tables to a completely market-driven mode, responding to demands for water resource surveys and linking of women’s self-help groups.

“It’s a business model I have never seen anywhere before,” says Prof Kenneth Keniston, founder-director, Massachussetts Institute of Technology’s India Programme. The second phase will bring services like e-banking, e-kisan, cancernet, online police station complaint redressal, rural e-commerce and online ticketing.

But this e-success may stay confined to rural Malappuram, as other districts have raised a cynical brow about fancy e-literacy programmes. That would be their loss.