TITLE-“BRIDGING THE DIGITAL GAP AT VILLAGE LEVEL: LESSONS LEARNT 
FROM PONDICHERRY'S VILLAGE KNOWLEDGE CENTRE” 
ooDr Vasala Madhava Rao 
co He ad Geomatics Cell, National Institute of Rural Development, Hyderabad, India. 
KEY WORDS-VKC, Digital Divide, WAP, VHF, Kiosks, IRDC, Hub, GIS 
ABSTRACT 
With widening gap in digital divide among urban and rural areas, it has become imperative to bring the people of 
disadvantageous groups to the main streams of society and have similar accessibility to the information technology for overall 
growth and prosperity of any country. Any intervention to bring the rural masses to the door step of IT, GIS and ITES can bridge 
the digital gaps in the society and facilitate growth and prosperity of any region, people and country. Pondicherry, a eastern state 
of India, exemplies the evidence of such a deliberate effort, promoted by a research NGO organization, who have made it 
possible to take advantage of the IT revolution for various aspects of the local people in terms of improvement in their 
information access, sharing, better preparedness for disasters and exposure on e-extension and education. The working of such a 
system making the whole village a environment friendly and bio-village and transformed the database to a knowledge base. 
Predominantly a fishing community set up, villages developed computer infrastructure and WAP based Motorola Spread 
Spectrum technology to have high speed distributed internet centres and share among them daily weather, agricultural 
information, health, education, credit linkups, GIS on land use and land cover, disaster information through downloading web 
heights and other multi purpose centres and also generate resources for the sustenance and promotion of the set up reliably. 
Village school children no longer scared of computers and plays games and educational CDs on the computers. Fishermen plans 
for his schedules to the sea based weather prediction and web heights. Village women have been managing the computers and 
also using them for multipurpose activities like job works, educational purposes, information sharing, developing various sectoral 
information base for village level development activities, policies and programmes of GO and NGOs and a host of activities. Now 
that computerization process and IT been operational in their villages and the village people are linked to the outside world, there 
is a conscious effort to take all advantage of the IT, Geomatics and ITES revolution for their own local use and development. 
Land use and Land cover information, land information system at the cadastral level, satellite information on natural resources 
and linking various layers of attribute data on socio economic, infrastructure, natural resources and market information, helped the 
village community to take decisions more judiciously in an optimum manner with various alternative action plans. Various action 
plans generated by GIS help the villagers save time and money and take actions in time. The Pondicherry experiment of Village 
Knowledge Centres made it possible to prove that IT, Geomatics and ITES can be effectively implemented at the local level and 
people can be partners in progress and decision makers in their own development. 
and involvement, the Government of Pondicherry 
BRIDGING THE DIGITAL GAP AT ; i 
VILLAGE LEVEL: LESSONS Jape 0 Sot all the villages in the UT using the 
LEARNT FROM PONDICHERRY'S 
VILLAGE KNOWLEDGE CENTRE 
The Village Knowledge Centre Project 
started in Villianur village in Pondicherry , where the 
Bio Village Project was ongoing. A Family Model 
approach was adopted, where the Village Councils 
were first discussed as an entry point activity. 
Dr Vasala Madhava Rao 
o» He ad Geomatics Cell, National Institute of Rural 
Development, Hyderabad, India. 
j Mission 
Genesis 
The Village Knowledge Centres project is 
  
The Village Knowledge Centres Project was 
initiated in 1998 for sustainable food security in the 
region by the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation 
(MSSRF), a non-profit organization (NPO) and has 
now become a useful network for rural development. 
The MSSRF, Chennai; the government of the Union 
Territory of Pondicherry, and nine villages in 
Pondicherry have gone into a MOU for setting up the 
Village Knowledge Centres. Based on the successful 
operation of MSSRF VKC and People's acceptance 
based on local agricultural communities’ demand for 
information on sustainable agricultural practices, 
credit, and marketing of produce and value addition by 
agriculture experts. The content on the network is 
prepared locally, using indigenous knowledge 
combined with expert information. The project began 
as an experiment in electronic knowledge delivery to 
the poor. A hybrid wireless network comprising of 
desktop computers, telephones, VHF duplex radio 
devices, and email connectivity through dial-up 
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