Women tap into new roles as mobile internet scheme targets rural India

The Guardian
Amrit Dhillon

Sheetal Bootoli poses in her village near Alwar, Rajasthan, with an internet cart provided by the ‘internet saathi’ initiative. The campaign aims to improve digital literacy among women in rural India. Photograph: Amrit Dhillon

A programme to improve digital literacy has provided 1.2 million women in rural India with access to technology hitherto denied them by a conservative culture

Sheetal Bootoli’s husband refused to let her touch the mobile phone. “What will you do with it? You’ll spoil it,” he said. It’s an attitude very familiar to women in rural India.

Yet now, four months later, Sheetal, 32, is teaching other rural women in and around Bootoli village, near Alwar, Rajasthan, to use the internet. Every day, she gets on her special “internet cycle cart” containing two web-enabled smartphones and two tablets. She cycles through cotton and onion fields to give local women instruction on going online.

The Bootoli women’s experience of the world has previously been limited to a trip to Alwar, 28km away, to see a doctor. Now, they are getting their first taste of the vastness of the internet.

“My husband has just got a smartphone and now I’m the one who teaches him about email and downloading WhatsApp,” says Sheetal, smiling.

Sheetal is part of the “internet saathi” (or partner) initiative, a campaign launched by Google India and Tata Trusts in May to address what is perhaps the biggest gender disparity in India: the fact that only 2% of internet users in rural India are women.

Internet use in India is growing fast. Last year, the country overtook the US to become the second largest online user base, after China, with 342 million internet users as of March 2016. Future growth will be largely in rural areas. A Boston Consulting Group study predicts that rural consumers will increase from 120 million in 2015 to almost 315 million in 2020.

The Google campaign, Helping Women Get Online, aims to impart basic internet skills to rural women in half the country’s villages – about 300,000 – in the next few years. “Since May, over 1.2 million women have benefited from the programme, spread across 40,000 villages,” said Sapna Chadha, head of marketing at Google India.

Through an army of trainers like Sheetal, rural women will learn to use the internet to improve their lives. Eventually, some may even come to earn a living online. Google provides the gadgets and training, while Tata Trusts uses its links with local NGOs to identify the online saathis and monitor progress. The internet carts are available in villages for a minimum of two days every week for four to six months.

The women of Bootoli don’t have televisions. “I saw the prime minister for the first time on the tablet. I saw Mecca – my dream – for the first time,” says Naseera Khan, 40, before asking Sheetal to show her pictures of the Taj Mahal.

Khan’s husband and son won’t let her touch their phones. Denying women access to mobile phones is rooted in a conservative culture. Men fear that young girls will start chatting to boys and dating, and that married women will be distracted them from housework.

Initially, the men in the village were reluctant to let their wives attend the training sessions but relented after realising that it seemed harmless. “On the training days, we finish our housework quickly and come so that the men can’t complain,” said several women in unison.

Sheetal helps them access the internet by using their local language and, if they are illiterate, through voice searches on Google or through videos. She has taught them that there is much on the internet that can help them, such as finding crop prices.

“We’re harvesting onions at the moment and we won’t sell to the middleman until we’ve checked online the price being offered at the wholesale market,” says villager Rehana Bano. Another woman said she downloads sample exam papers for her children.

“Through this training, we are creating a base for large numbers of rural women to use their new knowledge to earn an income. We are going to add curated content to help them earn a livelihood from their skills,” said Prabhat Pani, project director at Tata Trusts.

Women in Ghatgaon, in India’s Kendujhar district, use computer tablets. Photograph: Amrit Dhillon

In the neighbouring village of Ghatgaon, where women are better educated and men feel less threatened by the training, internet saathi Mamta Jatav, 28, has a slightly easier time. Some families have smartphones. The women have learned to search online for information about government benefits, crop prices, health tips, recipes, agricultural techniques, cattle deworming and how to keep animals healthy.

“My husband and I were about to buy a foreign breed of cow because everyone said it would give more milk than an Indian one. I did a search and found that feeding the foreign breed will be far too expensive. I’m glad we didn’t waste our money,” says Laxmi Sharma. She has ordered a smartphone online that will be delivered to a relative in Alwar, who will bring it on his next visit.

An older woman called Garibi says she learned of government subsidised food schemes that will be useful to her family. Another woman, a widow, says she realised she was entitled to a pension.

“Once they understand the power and value of the internet, they start saying they can’t do without it. Our hope is to see material change, including a change in men’s attitudes, when they see that families benefit when women learn internet skills,” says Chadha.

Jatav is still filled with a sense of wonder at her new role. “I never thought I would ever hold a smartphone in my hands,” she says. But is it useful? “Yes it is. When I had to go to a hospital in Jaipur, I looked up which train to catch, where it stopped, and where exactly the hospital was located. It made the long journey much easier. In fact, it makes life easier.”