Call for papers for ‘Individual Rights in the Age of Digital Medium’
Mobile technology is currently emerging as the first extensive form of electronic communication system in many regions of developing countries. Today, mobiles have evolved into much more than communication devices. Its new services such as data services, agricultural inputs, health care, money transfer, employability-based services have shown enormous economic and development benefits in most developing countries, including India. The mobile opportunity has been egalitarian. The “m” factor has given a paradigm shift to government, start-ups, and enterprises in all sectors to come closer to the citizens while delivering information and services on mobile.
e-Governance services are now redefined as m-Governance to bridge administration-citizen gaps. Similarly, e-Commerce is now continuously being rejigged with new forms, mechanism and channels to bring new forms of content and services for their consumers. Mobile-based value added services (MVAS) has become an economic formula for mobile technopreneurs to add value to business network and make services more lucrative. The expanding social space of mobile technology has accelerated the process of infrastructure development, deployment of networks, provided better services, and widened the basket of service delivery. Emergence of this technology has changed the concept of empowerment – it is not limited to economic but also social and cultural empowerment.
In June 2015, India crossed 980 million mobile users and 213 million users were using Internet through their mobile phones registering a CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) of 27.8 per cent, according to a recently published IAMAI and KPMG report. Mobile Internet users in rural India are likely to grow to 53 million by June 2015. However, the smartphone penetration is quite low in rural areas in comparison to the urban landscape. Growth of low-cost smartphones coupled with low mobile tariffs has enabled rural users to strengthen their democracy, enhance their healthcare services and enable better management of natural resources.
New mobile-based projects are emerging every day, focusing on education, health, livelihoods, agriculture, financial inclusion, water and sanitation, and environment matters in India. Most of them are being experimented by civil society groups and bilateral agencies to meet social and developmental needs of specific communities, while private stakeholders and government support them in many instances. These projects are primarily focused on either delivery of service or monitoring of services for providing support to frontline workers.
In order to understand how communities and frontline workers are using mobiles for information dissemination, reporting and monitoring of services and interpersonal communication, UNICEF India and Delhi-based NGO Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF) initiated a project ‘Mobiles for Social and Behaviour Change’ (MSBC). The first phase of the project was launched in 2013 with a two-day consultation on ‘Mobile Phone as a Tool for Social & Behaviour Change’ at New Delhi. Twelve projects were invited for the consultation to explore the concept of ‘mobile as a communication tool for development’. The recommendation of the first phase is to conduct deeper research to understand these projects, create more concrete partnerships between project stakeholders and the state government, so that each state can adopt and implement the MSBC project at higher scale.
On the basis of this recommendation, UNICEF India and DEF extended their partnership for MSBC Phase II in 2014. This meant going a step further into the issues around MSBC and creating a formidable platform to provide knowledge on diverse MSBC implemented projects.
The prime objective of Phase II was to (a) organise state-level consultation that could bring in local MSBC projects for deliberation and the state government could forge partnership with local MSBC to scale up at wider level; (b) conduct deeper research on MSBC projects on their usage of mobiles for social and behaviour change (SBC) in India, both for referential value and for advocacy purpose; (c) develop a directory of MSBC projects beyond their participation at five state consultations that can be used for referential purpose and advocacy.
This directory has a compilation of over 100 such mobile-based projects that evolve around addressing various issues and provide solution-based tools to various ongoing challenges around women, adolescents, youth, girls, children and sectors across health, education, nutrition, and empowerment. This compendium can be further used for referential and advocacy purpose. Some of the projects have been further researched and analysed. The bigger thinking of compiling over 100 projects is to explore how mobiles can drive desired social and behavioural changes among millions of Indians. This can also be a turning point in bringing much needed social stability, which in turn will drive stable and sustainable economic activities.
DEF is delighted to inform that this compendium is ready and will be released soon. Stay tuned, and watch this space to know more about the book. Meanwhile, you can read about some best practices in the area of mobile for behavioural and social change here.
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