March 9, 2009

By Jenny Carless

Unified communications is typically associated with improved business productivity, but in parts of the world it is also delivering a much more fundamental benefit: improving basic quality of life.

In some of the most remote parts of rural Southeast Asia, an agriculture and animal husbandry information system powered by unified communications is providing small-scale rural Indian farmers with a means of bridging the information gap. Access to the latest – and often vital – knowledge is helping them farm in a sustainable manner and ultimately improve the quality of life for their families and communities.

Providing a Lifeline

Cisco and BT have partnered since 2006 to help OneWorld, a charitable organization that strives to promote human rights and sustainable development, establish LifeLines India. The program features a telephone-based help line that imparts advice and guidance to improve the lives of rural farming communities.

"The success of LifeLines India demonstrates clearly how the right communications technology application can create a sustainable business model," notes Peter Tavernise, senior manager, Corporate Affairs at Cisco. "The program is not only scaling to support more regions, it has transformed itself to support other services and applications as well."

This effort to improve digital inclusion supports the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, in particular Goal 1, to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger. (See sidebar.)

A Powerful Information Tool

About 65 percent of people in India rely on farming for their livelihood, and their working environment can be extremely harsh: many areas suffer from a lack of sufficient rainfall, low soil fertility, poor irrigation facilities, and problems with diseases and pests.

A substantial part of the rural population has limited education and so cannot turn to magazines, newspapers or books for research. A voice-based information system can therefore provide an extremely powerful tool through which they can access the latest ideas and knowledge in agricultural development.

LifeLines India is based on Cisco Unified Messaging. Rural farmers' calls are directed to and answered by an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) function that leads the farmers through the process of leaving their queries in a local language. The Cisco technology is integrated with a customer relationship management application and information database provided by BT that manages the growing knowledge base of frequently asked questions (FAQs).

The farmers can make calls from telephones in their local community centers or from mobile phones that have been provided on site. Callers are greeted with an automated menu. They leave a message with their question and receive a "query ID number" with which they can retrieve their answer later – usually within 24 hours.

The LifeLines India system stores the calls on the web-based application. Employees search the database of FAQs answered by the Indian Society of Agribusiness Professionals (ISAP) to see if the issue has already been addressed.

When the employee has the answer, either from the FAQ database or by contacting ISAP directly for any new issues, he leaves a message on the system, using the query ID so the farmer can retrieve the answer.

The service is available 365 days a year and costs five Rupees (about US$0.10) – a small charge that helps create a sustainable business model.

Solid Achievements

The program has made a clear difference for the farmers who use it. For example, the mustard crop of Satya Prakash in Terichar Village, Niwari, Bundelkhand, was infected with the Mahu insect.

"I found out about LifeLines India and called the service to leave a query; it was really easy," Prakash explains. "The advice recommended a particular pesticide which I used, and this brought the infection completely under control."

Sushil Gupta from Sakrar Village, Jhansi called the LifeLines India number for advice on nutrition and care for his cow, which was ill and giving very watery milk.

"I followed the advice, and my cow is fine now. The milk quality has also improved," he states. "This service is very good, as the answers are given in a simple and easy-to-follow manner."

The program, which launched in November 2006, can point to many solid achievements:

• Participating farmers have increased profits from 25 to 150 percent due to a consistent improvement in crop quality and productivity.
• The FAQ database now contains more than 125,000 entries.
• The program has expanded to encompass more than 100,000 farmers in nearly 5,000 villages.
• Call volume has risen from 1,100 per month at launch to more than 200 calls daily.
• The program has expanded beyond agriculture and now supports teachers with advice on curriculum, pedagogy, policy and administration.

"At Cisco, we take a results-oriented approach to social investment; that means we're very focused on how well our investments perform. We look for programs that offer a measurable impact on society and that promise to sustain themselves over time through community involvement," says Tavernise. "LifeLines India is proving to be an excellent investment."

Using the right communications technology and a sustainable business model, LifeLines India promises to help improve the quality of life for people across the rural regions of Southeast Asia and beyond.

Jenny Carless is a freelance writer located in Santa Cruz, CA.