Coronavirus: Enable rural India to ‘WFH’

IN PERSPECTIVE

The large-scale spread of coronavirus is affecting every aspect of life, posing humungous challenges for countries. With the nation-wide lockdown, the government is trying to contain the virus spread. This has meant significant restrictions on movement of people. Many businesses and institutions are shut for unknown periods, significantly affecting all economic and social activities.

The difficult situation inflicted by the outbreak has resulted in a chaotic situation. There has been a huge reverse migration of labour. Students from rural areas studying in cities, and many IT company employees have returned to their villages. Good telecom connectivity can be a big boost to the rural areas now more than ever. Good connectivity can enable access to the latest developments with respect to coronavirus, health information, markets, businesses and education. Many new online services such as healthcare and education have emerged to overcome difficulties arising out of lockdown. However, there is also the requirement of consistent power along with good data connectivity. The users in rural areas may have the option of UPS (Uninterrupted Power Supply) or solar installations at home. However, the bigger problem is data connectivity.

For data connectivity, in general, the available options comprise of the wired and wireless (mobile wireless) broadband. The wired broadband in turn has the options of Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) and Fiber Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) network. The wireless broadband options available are the 2G/3G/4G wireless connectivity offered by telecom service providers (TSP) like Jio, Vodafone and Airtel. DSL is offered only by BSNL in the rural areas, but many locations are declared as not feasible for connection. Fiber connectivity is offered as part of Bharatnet (previously called the National Optical Fiber Network). Many Gram Panchayats (GP) are connected to Bharatnet and, through it, to the taluka (or block) head-quarters.

At present, the ‘Work From Home’ (WFH) employees prefer the more reliable wireless broadband from TSPs , as the DSL is not feasible at many locations besides reliability concerns. The fiber connectivity is not provisioned at all GPs for retail customers and the plan is to encourage third parties like TSPs, cable operators, VLEs (Village Level Entrepreneurs) and Common Service Centre (CSC) operators to provide the connections to retail customers in villages. It appears that rural citizens will be best served with good bandwidth if the TSPs are able to rent out the fibre from BBNL wherever available.

Those working from home are using collaboration tools like Webex, Zoom for video conferencing, team meetings and trainings. The VPN (Virtual Private Network) is enabling secure access to the networks in the offices. Perhaps in future, when normalcy returns, this gives the option for corporates to engage remote workforces. Therefore, the lockdown will act as an observation period for many to extend business to rural areas. Moreover, with good broadband facility, e-commerce will help farmers and artisans to market their products better. Hence, there is an urgent need for BSNL, BBNL and the government to focus and ensure reliable high-speed broadband in rural areas.

Public institutions such as schools, health centres, farmer organisations and self-help groups are also bogged down by lack of access to expertise in rural areas. The rural students can have access to online educational content just like it is available for their urban counterparts. Telemedicine facility will help provide expert advice from qualified doctors in cities. Farmers can have access to market information and get advisories on crops from experts. When normalcy returns, online commerce through digital wallets and UPI-based payments will spur the rural economy. Various G2C and B2C (Business to Citizens) services will make it convenient for rural citizens to avail the benefits of schemes.

However, efforts on Bharatnet roll-out need to improve. The deadlines to connect all of the 250,000 GPs have not been met. Even in those connected, the services are not provisioned in many. As of January 2020, as per the BBNL website, there were only 125,886 GPs where the fibre was laid, equipment installed, and services were rolled out. Timely supply of network equipment by various vendors and maintenance is said to be an issue that affect services. Cable cuts, power outages and insufficient diesel supplies for generators in towers, results in service being unavailable for indefinite periods. Availability of required tools for cutting and splicing of fibre cables, and shortage of skilled manpower are challenges in many places. The complexity of the overall arrangements involving multiple parties gives rise to coordination challenges. Retail customers in rural areas are unaware of the basket of services that can be made available. Further, the GP as a telecom network termination point requires proper manpower to make the service basket available to people.

The coronavirus lockdown has compelled all concerned to introspect on infrastructure and technology readiness in rural areas in order to address disaster management and business continuity requirements. It is an opportune time to overcome the hurdles and achieve the key objective of the Bharatnet to provide reliable high-speed data connectivity, which is likely to have a transformational effect on the quality of life in rural areas.

(Naik is Professor at IIM-Bangalore; Rao is Project Consultant at IIM-B)