A Case Study on The Warana Wired Village Project: Cooperatives Empowers Youth
Warana
Warana, a small district of Maharashtra state in India is a well-developed rural area. Much of Warana's success is due to the presence of a strong co-operative movement. About 50,000 farmers live in 100 villages spread in the 25,000-kilometer2 area covered by the scores of cooperatives. The main economic activity is sugar cane growing and processing. Emerging from the cooperative movement, The Warananagar Cooperative Complex in India has become famous as a precursor of successful integrated rural development, youth using technology. Since 1956, The Warana Sugar Cooperative has led the movement, resulting in the formation of more than 25 successful cooperative societies in the region that generated great social economy in India.
Co-operatives in Warana
The sugar cane factory, which produces 110,000 tons of sugar per year, employs 8,000 wor
kers and collects sugar cane from about 35,000 farmers, is the main source of income for the Warana community. Warana Cooperative Complex is hub of economic activities such as a dairy unit, a food-processing unit, a chain of department stores, poultry farming, and a series of women's co-operatives. The dairy employs 1,200 workers and collects 280,000 litres of milk per day from the 125 milk societies belonging to the dairy co-operative. The dairy co-operative, in turn, provides a series of services to its members; from veterinary aid to cattle shed design, from insemination to subsidy on animal purchases.
kers and collects sugar cane from about 35,000 farmers, is the main source of income for the Warana community. Warana Cooperative Complex is hub of economic activities such as a dairy unit, a food-processing unit, a chain of department stores, poultry farming, and a series of women's co-operatives. The dairy employs 1,200 workers and collects 280,000 litres of milk per day from the 125 milk societies belonging to the dairy co-operative. The dairy co-operative, in turn, provides a series of services to its members; from veterinary aid to cattle shed design, from insemination to subsidy on animal purchases.
A central poultry unit provides layer birds, feed, veterinary facilities, and marketing of eggs for about 500 small units producing 13 million eggs each year for an income of $90 million. An export-oriented food-processing unit (the Warana Agricultural Goods Processing Society) employs 400 workers, and produces fruit pulp and purees from fruit purchased from Warana (bananas) or from other parts of India (mangoes). The chain of department stores (the Warana Bazaar) has 350 employees working in 2 stores and 30 retail outlets in and around Warana. Finally, several co-operatives wholly controlled and managed by women are active in the production of snacks and baked goods, school uniforms, containers and labels for dairy products, and employ hundreds of women. The total turnover of these societies runs in millions. Warana Nagar has an electronic telephone exchange, connecting nearly 50 villages, which has permitted dial-up connections from village kiosks to the servers, located at Warana Nagar. There are many infrastructure facilities in and around Warana Nagar. About 80% of the population is agriculture-based and an independent agricultural development department has been established by the cooperative society. The region is considered to be one of the most agriculturally prosperous in India.
Potential - Young community
The region is substantially rural comprised of farming community. One third of the population is youth; the cooperative leaders visualize great potential in youth. The villagers are more literate compared to other region of the state, but if youth has been given technological knowledge and tools, they can be change agent for sustainable development agent. The cooperative leaders thought that Information and Communications Technology (ICT) could be used as an effective tool for rural development. Using ICT to streamline the operations connected with sugar cane growing and harvesting. This is benefiting small farmers, both in terms of transparency and time saved on administrative transactions, as well as the cooperative, in terms of monetary gains. ICT was brought as collaboration between the National Informatics Centre (NIC), the Government of Maharashtra, the Education Department and the Warana Cooperative Complex. The right conditions to bring ICT to Warana exist both in terms of human development and of infrastructure.
Empowering Youth
Finding people with the right mix of skills and motivations is a necessary condition for any project to succeed in bringing ICT to rural communities. In the case of Warana, young operators at the information kiosks generally come from the grassroots, and have a great faith in the potential of ICT to improve the standard of living of their community, especially of the rural youth. They feel that the Internet will allow young people to find information about educational and job opportunities, and they see IT as the best sector where to find stable and well-paid employment. Many operators have the capability of teaching computer skills and software to children and youth, and would be willing to provide training if given the necessary incentives. Furthermore, some of the operators have good programming skills; in the village of Tope, for instance, an operator has developed a database to manage the local store's orders and purchases. Some of these young operators have had job experiences in the city and decided to return to the Warana for the strong attachment to their community. If they are given the necessary incentives, these grassroots operators can become champions for ICT in their villages, easing access to information for farmers, providing training to children, and creating new economic opportunities through software development.
Goals of the Project
The Warana "Wired Village" project was initiated in 1998 by the Prime Minister's Office Information Technology (IT) Task Force. The stated goal of the project is not only to increase the efficiency and productivity of the sugar cane co-operative, but also to provide a wide range of information and services to 70 villages around Warana. The project aims in fact at giving villagers access to information in local language about crops and agricultural market prices, employment schemes from the government of Maharashtra, and educational opportunities.
The project is likely to start distance learning at IT centers, the digitalization of land records, and the connection of all of the cooperative's "business centers." Information on sugar cane growing and agricultural prices lies unutilized and has not been updated since 1998; this information was centrally provided by NIC, and local staff was unable to update it independently.
How it operates
There are fifty-four functioning village information kiosks that are facilitating the sugar cane production process at three stages: first, during the yearly registration for plantation when changes to property are recorded; second, with the issuance of harvesting permits; and third, with payments information. Farmers can go to the village information kiosks to receive payment slips. The sugar co-operative pays them for their crops in four installments that are credited directly to their bank accounts. The co-operative publishes payment dates on a local paper, so farmers know when it is their turn to go to the kiosks. 
Moreover, farmers can purchase fertilizer at deposits located next to the kiosks in cash or by using credit. If they buy using credit, they get a receipt for their purchase at the kiosk. Money spent on transport of the crop to the sugar factory is also entered in the system. Village information kiosks have operators who feed the data into the computers, and are generally open between daytime. Depending on the size of the village served by a kiosk, between 30 and 100 farmers visit the kiosk daily. Village kiosks have a PC with a printer and most are connected to the sugar administrative building via wireless telephony. Some of them though, are now saving information on floppy disks and bringing the disks to the sugar administrative building because they cannot afford big telephone bills. Kiosks also have email and Internet access, although connections are often very slow. Some kiosks are bypassing the sugar factory computer center and connect to the Internet through private providers.
Moreover, farmers can purchase fertilizer at deposits located next to the kiosks in cash or by using credit. If they buy using credit, they get a receipt for their purchase at the kiosk. Money spent on transport of the crop to the sugar factory is also entered in the system. Village information kiosks have operators who feed the data into the computers, and are generally open between daytime. Depending on the size of the village served by a kiosk, between 30 and 100 farmers visit the kiosk daily. Village kiosks have a PC with a printer and most are connected to the sugar administrative building via wireless telephony. Some of them though, are now saving information on floppy disks and bringing the disks to the sugar administrative building because they cannot afford big telephone bills. Kiosks also have email and Internet access, although connections are often very slow. Some kiosks are bypassing the sugar factory computer center and connect to the Internet through private providers.
Warana's village booths supports supply chain management through coordinating the growth and harvesting of sugarcane for the local sugar cooperative. Additional transactional services include email services, digital photography, and astrology. Informational services are accessed through the Internet and include agricultural best practices, market rates, local news and political developments, employment news, and information on children's education.
The village booths offer few eGovernance services, though they are widely demanded.
- Information on cultivation practices and crop disease control
- e-Governance Health information, government programs, services and contact information, land records, licenses, birth and death certificates, submission of government forms online and emails to government officials about grievances.
- Utilizing IT to increase the efficiency and productivity of co-operatives by setting up a state-of-the art computer network, providing agricultural, medical and educational information to the villagers at facilitation booths in their villages;
- Providing communication facilities at the booths to link villages to theWarana cooperative complex, bringing the world's knowledge to the villagers' doorsteps through the Internet via the National Informatics Centre Network (NICNET), and establishing a geographical information system (GIS) of the surrounding 70 villages, leading to greater transparency in administration especially in matters related to land.
- Employment and agricultural schemes and government procedures;
- Automated assistance in completing applications for government documents such as ration cards and birth and death certificates;
- Crop information; bus and railway timetables; medical facilities; and water supply details.
- From the booths villagers can interact with the Warana management to register grievances and seek redress. Agricultural marketing information is available from the Warana web-server, giving market arrival and the daily prices of various regulated commodities. It is also possible for students to access educational and vocational information from the booths.
Other applications include the management information system for sugarcane cultivation developed by the National Informatics Centre (NIC), which leads to speedy and accurate data exchanges between the factory and the farmers, using the village facilitation booths. This information is essential to the farmers. The land records application permits villagers to view and print extracts using data from a land database stored on a compact disc, or from the website of the taluk to which they belong, right at their village booth (a taluk is a sub-division of a district concerned with tax revenues). A Geographical Information System (GIS) has also been developed. It includes a base map of the 70 villages involved in the project, socio-economic information, e.g. about schools, population, land under cultivation and linking cadastral maps in local language. ICT has act as catalyst in development of the rural area and making happy and rich farmer community. Thanks to Cooperative leadership, whose faith in youth has resulted into sustainable development.
Details of the Wired Warana Village Project
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