What is Project Sanchar Shakti?

President of India Pratibha Patel on March 7, 2011 launched the ‘Sanchar Shakti’ project of the Department of Telecommunications, a suite of mobile value-added services (VAS) to provide a variety of useful information to women and women’s self-help groups about government schemes and health and social issues, besides inputs related to and training in livelihood, over the mobile phone.

The scheme, which is funded by Department of Telecom’s (DoT) Universal Service Obligation Funds (USOFs), is for mobile value-added services and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) related livelihood skills for Women’s Self Help Groups. The scheme is the unique ICT scheme envisages empowering women, especially in rural areas, with the help of NGOs and other national and international organisations working for the uplift of women.

The scheme is initiated as a gender budget scheme, it adopts an innovative approach to connect rural women with the information and communication technologies (ICT) sector, by involving women Self Help Groups (SHGs).

The targeted group will benefit through improved skills and livelihoods, the overall rural community will get access to facilities such as locally available mobile repair and solar mobile charging centres. Rural women will thus become both users and enablers of ICT services.

It should also serve the purpose of increasing tele-density as well as broadband connectivity in rural areas, enabling the rural populace to join the cyber community and, in this way, bridge the digital divide. With the creation of ICT skills sets in rural areas, over a period of time, these areas can become centres for the consumption and production of various ICT goods and services, including hubs for processing outsourced work,

The scheme is funded by the USO fund. The USO fund is accumulated from a charge levied upon on private telecom operators for providing telecom services in rural areas. It envisaged that the implementation of USO Obligation for rural/ remote areas would be undertaken by all fixed service providers who shall be reimbursed from the USO Fund.

President noted that women constitute about half of our population, and until they are empowered, we will have an unfinished task on hand…real development cannot take root if it bypasses women, who represent the very pivot around which social change takes shape.

The Sanchar Shakti scheme includes four categories of projects aimed at rural women SHGs.

i. giving subsidised VAS subscription

ii. Setting up mobile repair

iii. Modem repaid centers in rural areas; and

iv. Installing solar-based mobile charging

v. Centers in rural areas.

Various Pilot Projects

Under the mobile VAS project category, seven pilot projects would be initiated in different parts of the country. About 15,000 SHG members were expected to benefit from these pilot projects. The lead executing agency and location of the mobile VAS pilot projects were Tata Teleservices for Uttar Pradesh; Sasken Communication for Tamil Nadu and Kerala; Reuters Market Light for Maharashtra and Uttarakhand; Unitech Wireless for Tamil Nadu; Videocon Telecommunications for Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry; and Vodafone Essar for Andhra Pradesh.

Meanwhile, private service provider Uninor launched ‘Soochna Shakti’, a revolutionary Value- Added Service (VAS) to empower rural women. This innovative VAS by Uninor ‘Soochna Shakti’ will deliver information, expert advice and news alerts on health, education, self employment and finance on an IVR portal which can be accessed by dialing a short code from anywhere at any time.