The Government formulates policies, programmes, projects and schemes to accelerate rural development. All these programmes and schemes are implemented by the concerned ministries and departments of the Union and State Governments in the areas of education, health, women’s empowerment, sanitation, transport, agriculture and infrastructure at the grassroots level. The schemes, policies and programmes of rural development aim at alleviating rural poverty, generating employment, and eliminating hunger and malnourishment, accompanied by the enrichment of the quality of human life, as reflected by a significantly improved Human Development Index. The objective of rural development, however, is not merely the development of rural areas, but the development of rural communities to dispel ignorance and poverty and to assist the process of creating a self-reliant and self-sustaining community. However, due to a lack of timely and relevant information, these objectives have remained unattainable.
DEF believes that information is the most dynamic tool that propels the empowerment of marginalised sections of society. It is a great enabler for the educated, while it can also act as a blocker, causing hindrances in the participation rate of people in development interventions at the village level. Availing the benefits of government schemes is part of our constitutional rights, irrespective of caste, class or religion. The main problem is that people are hardly aware of the schemes and benefits run by the Government. Hence, there was an urgent need to serve the community with the information they are entitled to, which could only be achieved by strengthening and democratising the environment of public schemes’ information dissemination, services and final entitlement gains for focused groups and beneficiaries. Thus, institutionalising the role of information agents can clear such clogs of corruption and exploitation at various levels.
The “SOOCHNAPRENEUR” programme started in 2016, under which selected women from rural areas were trained with the necessary information and technology so that he or she could make this information available to those in need, mainly in rural areas. Their prime responsibility is to make information regarding various schemes and benefits available to the needy; in return, they are expected to charge a nominal amount to sustain their livelihood. This initiative develops and inculcates entrepreneurial abilities and qualities of a digital information entrepreneur. They steer the process of empowerment by making information regarding government schemes and benefits available to communities.
This is an initiative that hones and incubates the entrepreneurial abilities and qualities of individuals. “SoochnaPreneurs” are community information agents who bridge the gap between the Government and citizens and make information available to last-mile rural beneficiaries. They operate at both Panchayat and Block levels by empowering their immediate surroundings.
The approach focuses on social entrepreneurship in rural India using wireless technology and mobile devices, where the information society and economic ecosystem are still underdeveloped and vast sections of society remain unreached. It also focuses on livelihood, skill development and employability of rural youth in the information economy, while serving public and private information services to rural clients in a need-based, relevant and affordable manner.
Dissemination of public schemes and private utility-based information to ensure rightful citizen entitlements remains a major public service delivery challenge. Thus, the SoochnaPreneur model is a unique approach that has created rural information entrepreneurs as change agents of society, catering to public schemes, information services and entitlement needs of those living in difficult social and economic environments through the use of wireless technologies.
These social entrepreneurs can be seen as deviant economic actors who seek to serve the poor and disadvantaged segments of the population.
Social entrepreneurship can commonly be defined as “entrepreneurial activity with an embedded social purpose”. The concept has thus become a broad umbrella encompassing activities and processes to enhance social wealth. It has multiple approaches. One approach offers a more idealised view of social entrepreneurs as change agents in the social sector, while also giving them the opportunity to earn income in the pursuit of social change.
The programme adopted the social entrepreneurship model with the approach that “SoochnaPreneurs are more likely to operate in a local area, connecting with internal and external delivery systems to bring benefits to powerless segments of the population.” Using this approach, information entrepreneurs are being created. These information entrepreneurs connect last-mile communities with the benefits of government welfare schemes, as well as digital and financial services.
Under this programme, a pool of rural information entrepreneurs will strengthen and democratise the environment of public schemes’ information dissemination, services and final entitlement gains.
It is a social entrepreneurship programme catalysed through an Android-based multilingual app, “MeraApp”, which has a scheme-based repository to address entitlement needs and includes in-built features to track entitlement delivery progress and revenue earned.
The project aligns with the larger goal of the organisation to bridge information poverty gaps through digital means and addresses wider information asymmetry in Indian society. It also aligns with the national agenda of better governance, in tune with the flagship programme “Digital India”.
The project fulfils the core components of the Digital India flagship:
- Creation of digital infrastructure
- Delivery of services digitally
- Digital literacy