About LifeLines

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 came into fruition under the partnership of British Telecom, Cisco Systems and OneWorld in September 2006 with the launch of LifeLines as an agri-information service, catering to rural north and central India.

The strategic objectives of the LifeLines service are:

• To increase livelihood and income opportunities for rural communities through access to key decisive information; and

• To create a sustainable delivery model by concurrently creating a contextual knowledge base as queries get answered

The LifeLines service 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 modest initiative has today flourished into an impressive programme for grassroots knowledge delivery, covering:

• Over 200,000 farmer households across 3 states - Haryana,  Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh - in the AGRICULTURE sector
  
  
• Over 455,518 teachers in 105,676 schools across the state of Rajasthan where it serves as a toll-free helpline in the EDUCATION sector
  

In an easy-to-use process through the medium of phone, LifeLines links up users in rural India 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.

Cumulatively LifeLines Agriculture and LifeLines Education receive and respond to an average of 500 calls in a day.

A successful journey

In the fourth year of its operation now, Lifelines has covered much ground in successfully delivering digitally engineered information and knowledge systems to communities in remote rural locations across India.

The service has, in ways more than one, brought about a sense of information empowerment for the rural commons its serves - bridging the rural knowledge gap as an enabling info-helpline.

The results from the effort can be well discerned today, as users employ their newly acquired know-how in practice, and gain benefits - both social and economic - from the increased knowledge, information and awareness of their occupations.