With an objective to understand digital demography of Guna, DEF with a support from Ford Foundation conducted research in 16 villages of Guna district, Madhya Pradesh. The villages covered under were: Bamori, Haddi Mill, Guna, Singwasa chak, Aaron, Buddha balaji, Sakatpur, Buddha Balaji Road, Haripur, Akoda, RadhoGarh, ChandShah Baba Dargah, Bajrang garh, Chanchora, Matapur, and Fatehgarh.
The main objectives of the study was to understand the access, demand and availability of communication services in communities and their perception, enhancing the information about the current service facility/resources of villages. However, the study had a few limitations which include: quality of services that has been used in the analysis is based only on the observations by field visits or by the information provided by the community.
The study adopted a methodology of purposive sampling to initiate detailed enquiry into the issues that have been identified in objectives of study and to address the concerns of communities and individuals in communication facility at village level. The data in the study has been procured through intensive fieldwork in sixteen villages.
Fieldwork techniques such as participant observation, key informant interviews, both unstructured and structured, with open-ended questions and close ended questions were used for selecting the primary data. The sample size of data was 160 households along with survey of the local institutions through questionnaires. The information at the community level was collected from a wide array of stakeholders that included elected representatives of Gram Panchayat, village opinion makers, members belonging to different caste groups, women and youth.
The study also represents the location based information of different services available to communities for their use. These services include power supply, number of telco operators, number of schools, number of NGOs, number of enterprises, and ICT enabled services across agriculture, small businesses, government schemes, etc.
The population of Guna constitutes 53 per cent male and 47 per cent female population. Guna has an average literacy rate of 67 per cent, higher than the national average of 59.5 per cent, male literacy is 75 per cent, and female literacy is 57 per cent. In Guna, 15 per cent of the population is under 6 years of age (Census 2011).
The study shows that small businesses comprise of 41 per cent people, while 21 per cent people are daily-wage laborers, 10 per cent rural citizens’ main occupation is agriculture. Around 8 per cent people are in professional services and 16 per cent of the population is student.
Out of 16 villages, selected as target area for wireless network, Aaron village is one of the most developed villages as it has the maximum number of schools, college, and NGOs and other facilities, whereas Akoda is the least developed village. However, the highest number of enterprises is available in Guna. Most of the villages do not have basic educational facilities such as school and colleges.
The average power supply in the district is 9 hours and the average quality of MTS available in the district is four hours. In most of villages, maximum 5 telecom operators are available. BSNL is the only telco that is available across the whole district, while other telecom operators such as Vodafone, Airtel, Reliance and Idea have also maintained their availability in the region. However, the quality of internet and services in the district is not up to the mark. Although major ISP operators such as BSNL, Airtel, Reliance, etc. are active but 80 per cent mobile and internet users in Guna complain about connectivity issues and quality of bandwidth. The State Government has provided financial assistance to develop the communication facilities but due to poor maintenance of the infrastructure created, many of these have become non–functional. More than 80 per cent of the mobile or internet users in the rural areas face long hours of connectivity failure, due to either less coverage by mobile towers or lack of electricity supply.
Receiving reliable statistics on the use of ICT in Guna is very difficult. Except in upper-income groups, access to mobile, or a computer or the internet at home is not a typical phenomenon.
However, the demand of ICT services for daily needs is very much in demand. People have shown their interest to receive information and technology enabled services for their work. Over 91.25 per cent people have shown their interest to receive health information, 90 per cent want educational services such as exam results, forms, etc., while 90 per cent want market information and travel information (including rail enquiry and transportation info, etc.). The demand of livestock management and agriculture related information is 86.25 per cent and 82.50 per cent respectively.