Telcos extend helpline to farmers

A farmer calls from a distant village in the Solan district of Himachal Pradesh. One can hear it sitting inside the office of One World South Asia in New Delhi. It is trapped in the massive data-base of phone calls from farmers it has created.

The farmer, Bir Singh, asks on the phone for remedies for pests which are attacking his apples.

The phone-call coming on a dedicated helpline created by the NGO along with BT Telecom is directed through a massive server in Mumbai to a call centre operator in Delhi who then directs the call to experts hired especially for the purpose.

There are about seven experts catering to Himachal farmers. And 700 villages in three states are presently using the helpline. The reply is received and then sent back to the farmer within 24 hours.

There are volunteers in the village equipped with a mobile phone charging Rs 5 per call who go and deliver the replies to the farmers. This helpline or 'lifeline' as British Telecom calls it is one of the first forays of telecom companies in India into corporate social responsibility. Vodafone became the second entrant into the field this month when it announced a $10 million education initiative.

BT's Lifelines is a collaboration between BT, Cisco and OneWorld charity, designed to promote digital inclusion in the developing world. Started a year ago, it has covered 700 villages in three states so far.

CSR head of BT Global Services, Janet Blake says that globally, most communication companies invest in ICT education which falls under the larger banner of Digital and Social inclusion. In India, we feel that telcos should support community development in this direction so that the youth and underprivileged embrace technology faster.

The Lifelines project is slowly picking up and there are 300 calls a day from 700 villages. There are about 40 volunteers in these villages offering phone services to people, says Naimur, director of One World South Asia.

The total cost of developing and delivering this project is approximately £500,000 and the developed technical infrastructure can be used for scaling up the services, and also can be reused in other sectors "" as is being done for education in West Bengal.

The project intends to be self-sustaining on a 'user pays' model. It will support itself in two years, says Blake who feels that parterning with telecom companies to pool together resources is a possibility.

Blake sites the example of Lifelines where Reliance, in Mumbai, is providing services for the helpline. She says that even collaboration between competitors like Vodafone could become a reality with the passage of time. It will be co-empetition (cooperate and compete), as Blake puts it.

The helpline is poised to expand to another 1000 villages by 2008 and triple the coverage by 2010. The service will be handling over 800,000 calls each year from 300 a day now, says Blake.

BT, along with partners One world and Cisco also plan to scale up in terms of activities by including education in its agenda.

"The idea is to provide a helpline for both teachers and students initially covering 650 villages in the remote parts of West Bengal. The service would enable callers to seek academic support and ask for clarification about curriculum issues as an aid to learning," says Blake.

Vodafone, which announced a foundation recently, has also identified education as the focus area, but is yet to define its strategy projects and partners.

Andrew Dunnett, Director, the Vodafone Group Foundation however echoes BT as he says that there is a possibility to use technological expertise and core strength of tie company in whatever it did.

"From our experience of developing 23 independent Vodafone foundations, we consider it natural that the technological expertise and indeed the skill sets of our people will be utilised in the social investment programme to differing degrees," he said.

Janet Blake,
CSR head, BT Global

What can telecom companies in India do for CSR?

Telecom companies in India can really benefit their society, though most community initiatives by telcos globally are more termed as Community Marketing than social responsibility.

In India, there is a wide mosaic of activities that an organisation can kick-start to collaborate with their community and this is driven by the CSR focus of the organisation.

Globally, most communication companies invest in ICT education which falls under the larger banner of Digital and Social inclusion. In India, we feel that telco's should support community development in this direction so that the youth and underprivileged embrace technology faster.

Do you think that companies should set aside their competition and work together for social good? Do you see yourself working with Idea or Vodafone as part of CSR?

The success of any project whether it's CSR or business, lies in execution, and one does not need to initiate a plethora of activities to say that they care. Yes, we agree that communication companies should come together to work for the social good of humanity.

The easy step is to collaborate with partners and BT is working with its partners globally on certain CSR projects. The Lifelines project is an excellent example. With the passage of time and learning, and the eminence of co-emptition (cooperate and compete), the collaboration of competitors will be a reality.