India: Extending the Reach of Audio Blogging to Underserved Regions

With the rapid growth of the Internet and mobile communications in India, the country’s middle-class has been reaping the benefits of these advances for last several years. But, unfortunately there is a section of the population that is beyond its reach. Many remote and tribal regions, including uneducated and illiterate users, are beyond the reach of basic Internet services. Market data shows that India, a country of 1.2 billion, has only around 100 million Internet users and over 800 million mobile phone subscribers.

Nevertheless, social reformers and activists have been working to bring the benefits of new technologies to the underserved population in India. To slowly bring these regions into the modern world, you need a combination of old and new technologies, according to Tripti Lahiri, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal’s IndiaRealTime site.

In this report, Lahiri wrote about an activist, Shubhranshu Choudhary, who started an Internet forum CGNet in 2004 to help draw greater attention to the concerns of tribal residents of insurgency-hit Chhattisgarh. “This state is badly served by the mainstream media because the number of Internet subscribers in that region are less than 0.5 percent of the population,” stated Choudhary.

 However, according to Choudhary, some 70 percent of the population uses mobile phones. The IndiaRealTime site quoted Choudhary, as saying, “We noticed that even in tribal areas 5 to 10 percent of the people have mobile phones.” So, in 2009, he thought of an alternative way to reach the underserved population of Chhattisgarh.

In February 2010, working with Bill Thies, a researcher with Microsoft’s (News - Alert) Bangalore-based Technology for Emerging Markets, Choudhary launched a new website called CGNet Swara. The word “Swara” means “voice” in Hindi.

As per the report, the CGNet Swara site uses open-source Internet telephony software Asterisk and audio-blogging software LoudBlog to help villagers blog over the phone. The CGNet Swara network uses a voice-recognition technology, so callers can listen to or record messages and announcements, according to Lahiri. However, the voice messages are edited by Choudhury and other moderators before being disseminated on the network, wrote Lahiri.

According to Choudhary and his supporters, the impact of CGNet Swara or audio blogging is tremendous. A study conducted by Thies and two other researchers shows that Swara has put out 1,100 messages since it was launched.

Over 9,000 different phone subscribers have called in to listen, out of which about 1,500 have called 10 or more times each. Although, the Swara site has not yet reached the goal of broad, direct use by villagers, a small pool of committed users is responsible for a large share of the announcements.

The result is that people’s grievances are being heard and problems are being addressed, wrote Lahiri. Prior to audio blogging, the poor and uneducated people of tribal regions of Chhattisgarh were isolated from the mainstream media, enabling Maoist rebels to strengthen their position in the state,  wrote Lahiri.

Ashok Bindra is a veteran writer and editor with more than 25 years of editorial experience covering RF/wireless technologies, semiconductors and power electronics. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Jennifer Russell