Acceleration of Poverty Alleviation and Rural Development in India through Digital Technology

After working at the grassroots level, providing last-mile delivery for over two decades in highly inaccessible areas, we have often wondered about the reasons for existing problems and possible solutions in the rural areas in India that were leading to ignorance, poverty, and lack of development. Lack of communication and poor infrastructure development meant that the villagers were left to fend for themselves in their daily lives. And, they came up with their own solutions, right or wrong. Wouldn’t it be nice to improve communication and provide all sorts of information and resources to the villagers through the internet and evolving technology to accelerate development, we wondered. The creation of Digital highways with global connections would ultimately be a great equalizer.

For two decades, we have been using traditional means to make a difference in the lives of underserved villagers with a focus on education improvement, women empowerment, youth employment, preventive healthcare, infrastructure development, and encouraging community involvement. Our digital literacy education started in January 2013 when we trained about 500 village youth and students in basic computer skills. Back in 2013, villagers were intimidated by computers and at the same time, there was a great deal of interest in them. Functioning computers or smart devices did not exist. We added more than a hundred desktops & laptops, projectors, and printers and kept training the school students and youth over the last decade making them comfortable with basic digital literacy.

We have gradually come to believe that these very focus areas can be given a boost with the deployment of evolving pertinent digital technologies, thereby markedly improving the quality of life for the poor and accelerating development in rural areas. This will help bridge the Socio-economic Divide and enable rural citizens to avail services now available to all others. Although the seeds of technology use were sown in 2019 prior to the pandemic, we started realizing the huge potential of this digital revolution to alleviate poverty during the pandemic, when our traditional means of non-profit work came to a painful halt, gradually. We had to shift our focus to Covid relief work.

With this in mind, Pragathi seeks to leverage appropriate digital technology to alleviate poverty and accelerate self-sustaining rural development mainly via imparting digital technology training to the students and youth of the villages. The villagers can then find gainful employment and carry forward the pace of sustainable rural development in the directions they desire and also pass on their skills and knowledge to others in the community, without destabilizing the ecosystem of the villages but rather enhancing and enabling it. These steps towards rural development and self-contained villages will accomplish the goal of Gram Swaraj by uplifting the vast majority of the population dependent on agriculture and allied activities for livelihood, much faster. To this end, we promote the ‘use of technology / digital literacy’ to uplift the poor and help with rural development to achieve Gram Swaraj status.

Technology, equipment, and the internet are evolving, becoming better, cheaper, and more readily available by the day. With the increasing penetration of mobile usage in rural India, it will be easier to implement simple digital technology solutions even in inaccessible rural areas. With a little bit of ingenuity and browsing, a student sitting even in an inaccessible remote village in India can get access to lessons, lectures, tutors, and training in any subject area or skill from top-class experts and fill their knowledge gaps. The current pandemic reinforces our belief that remote e-learning is not only possible but maybe safer. The sky is the limit.

e-Volunteering will capture the imagination of youngsters and others across the globe, who will be willing to connect with people in other difficult-to-access inconvenient areas to pass on different skills and talents, using the digital highways. e-Meetings can be organized easily instead of in-person meetings.

Digital global highways will help us access these rural areas much more easily and efficiently. We no longer need to sweat it out or spend too much time or money unnecessarily traveling repeatedly or be inefficient in myriad ways once these digital technologies are in place in the villages we are developing as model villages in Telangana State, India.

Rurbanization needs to be promoted. It is important to tap fully into the rural population to realize the full economic potential of India. We cannot afford to leave the rural areas far behind, for this will only lead to more discrepancy and grave consequences in every aspect of life in the future.

Scaling up the work with much less effort and funds will be possible. Our thinking must be modern, in line with the times and ever-changing needs of current and future generations. We must shed old, inefficient ways to embrace newer more efficient ways.

Our Vision for the Future

With the intention of alleviating poverty, for the reasons mentioned above, Pragathi is making a conscious decision to ride on the information and digital revolution wave carefully, by bringing the latest technologies to Burgula and surrounding villages. These measures will lead to self-contained villages and thus inch us closer to attaining Gram Swaraj.

We intend to develop an IT Park at the existing Pragathi Rural Development Centre (PRDC) in Burgula, Telangana. It is situated on three acres of land, about 60 km from the heart of the city of Hyderabad. PRDC has been a hub for Rural Transformation already; we intend to convert it into a digital technology center, whereby different digital services can be delivered to the villagers of Burgula and hundreds of nearby villages through these micro-centers of specialized operation.

Our vision is in line with the "Digital Villages” campaign. There are around 6,50,000 villages in India, with 70% of India’s population living in these villages.

Vision, Mission, and Values of Global Pragathi
Vision

To be leaders in humanitarian efforts globally to mitigate poverty by developing good models at the grassroots level.

Mission

Reduce poverty through improving educational opportunities and quality, empowering women, making youth employable, promoting preventive health, improving infrastructure, and getting everyone on board in the community

Values

Compassion: the most important quality needed to do sustained humanitarian work

Action: we believe in the adage ' Actions Speak Louder Than Words' and translate our ideas into action

Impartial: we help irrespective of caste, creed, religion, regional, linguistic differences etc.

Harmony: in the communities by making basic necessities of life available to the poor

Collaboration: ultimately make a much bigger impact in the lives of the poor through collaboration