Kerala 2005 - of Planning Commission

CHAPTER 8
LOOKING AHEAD: POSSIBILITIES AND STRATEGIES
137
Box 8.3: Employment Generation in Information Communication Technology: Replicating Akshaya Model
To ease educated unemployment in the State, information communication technology (ICT) can play a prominent role
as demonstrated by Akshaya (perpetuating prosperity) project in Malappuram district. The project’s main concern is to
provide infrastructure in ICT, a necessary but not sufficient condition for e-growth based development strategy, with
public-private partnership. To begin with, the project has created 617 e-centres (Akshayas), one in every two wards of
local bodies (panchayat/municipality) generating direct employment for about 3,085 persons (five persons per centre).
The educational background of the 589 entrepreneurs is given below.
Source: http://www.akshaya.net/akshaya/centrestat/edu.asp
Its replicability in the remaining districts in the state in the next three years would generate about 50,000 employment
opportunities and direct investment of Rs. 500 crore. A major component of the expenditure would be on about
40,000 computers and related peripherals and software to carry out various ICT based services of the centres
(GOK, 2004). To keep the multiplier effect locally, computers should be purchased from small vendors and assemblers
estimated to be 4,000 in the state. Such a policy will provide stable demand for the services of small vendors/units in
the maintenance and repair of the durable ICT hardware and software.
The major role of the Government is to convert the ICT infrastructure in the region to sustainable growth by
creating stable demand for the services provided by the Akshaya centres. This involves, among other things, a high
level managerial and technical committee sponsored by the State to link e-centres to the newly emerging areas of
ICT services particularly in e-education, e-health, e-tourism and e-governance.
One of the major problems of some of these initiatives is the
long gestation period involved in completing a given project.
For example, the computerisation of treasury operations,
started in 1991, took 13 years to complete its first phase. The
programme for computerisation and e-linking of local selfgovernments,
started in 1996, is still in its infancy, with less than
1 per cent of local self-governments able to take advantage of
the programme. The e-learning at the school was started a year
ago but with extremely minimal infrastructural facilities (e.g.
two computers per school) thus spreading scarce resources too
thinly. A phased approach by covering a certain percentage of
schools in each phase would have helped in ensuring quality
of such education as well as allow room for ‘learning by doing’
for further improvement of the programme.
The second area is training for nursing, demand for
which appears to be very high. The President of India,
Dr A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, has already mentioned in his
Vision Plan for the State the need for training nurses to meet
the already existing demand for about 50,000 nurses in the
rest of India. Its potential as foreign exchange earner is very
high (Box 8.4).