Telecentres As Community Centres

Today the world is a community. It is a global community. It has shrunk in size, due to technological interventions and interfaces. Yet at the micro level, communities exist in anguish. Communities which would like to be literate, communities which would like to interact with the larger conglomerate. And communities which would earnestly desire an advancement of economic status. The very concept of the telecentre is an advocate of the above. Yet such advocacy is not enough in letter and spirit. It needs to be worked out with interfaces of technology. And the computer and the internet can and must play pivotal roles here for ' computeracy' as well as a source of interaction with the outer world. Telecentre management is communication management, technology management and management of economics. Can we learn and earn at the same time? A telecentre gives us the opportunity to do so. It creates the economics of value. It is a hub of the community, where it can strengthen its hands, and learn to learn, and learn to live together. It creates the right kind of interface between the micro and macro levels. It posits humanitarian values of access and equity. It posits egalitarianism, and shows how concord within and outside the community can exist, harmony between the outer and the inner.
Technology is a means to the end. Rather technologies. The computer, the radio, the television and the mobile. The potent source of the community radio, as a means for social communication, breaking barriers of social dysfunctionality. And, of course education:literacy, distance education, training, counselling. The telecentre unravels all the dynamics of social and educational mobility, horizontal, vertical. It demythicizes the belief that communities are 'small'. They may be small in numbers, but their power to harness, learn, and be creative is unmitigated. This is an expression of the power of the community, not through the atavistic herd instinct, but through a passion for learning-''the treasure within''.

Ananya S Guha
IGNOU Institute For Vocational Education And Training
Shillong, INDIA.