About the LifeLines India service

The LifeLines India service was born of a dream to create a digital inclusion programme that would make a real difference to people’s lives in rural India by improving their access to technology and information, and narrowing the digital divide for them.

This dream was realized in September 2006 when LifeLines India was launched, as a novel ICT-led helpline, under the founder partnership of British Telecom, Cisco Systems and OneWorld. The programme commenced with strategic objectives to:

• Increase livelihood and income opportunities for rural communities through access to key decisive information

• Create a sustainable delivery model by concurrently creating a contextual knowledge base as information exchange takes place through the service

LifeLines India leverages a mix of internet and telephone technologies  -  to provide essential and demand-based information, advice and guidance to remote and rural communities in India - through the medium of "voice, in the local language and within 24 hours."

The service covers two of India's very primary sectors - Agriculture and Education.

In an easy-to-use process, LifeLines links up rural users through the medium of phone to experts in various fields, whom they can consult for their day to day queries - a farmer posts a query on a pest-management solution to save his dying crop in the field, while a teacher asks about which best method to follow to tackle a tricky math problem in class VI.

This modest initiative has today flourished into an impressive programme for grassroots knowledge delivery. The service today has cumulatively covered:

• Launched 2006, has completed 10 crop cycles and today reaches more than 150,000 farmers in 1000 villages

• Launched 2008, is a toll-free service today reaching over 450,518 primary and upper primary teachers in Rajasthan