The resounding success that TARAhaat has had in Bundelkhand encouraged it to experiment its model at Bathinda in Punjab. The simple functioning of the model made small children, girls, house wives and even illiterates to use it from day one itself.

Part of it could be attributed to the traditional rural mindset of the parents but much of it could be attributed to the lack of proper infrastructure facilities available in rural areas which deny them access to education, information and employment – the three most potent tools of empowerment, especially women empowerment.

Today, in the age of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), when age-old rural mindsets – restricting women behind the four walls of the house, not allowing them to take education and strictly prohibiting them from taking any kind of employment anywhere – are crumbling under the impact of print and visual media which have made deep inroads into rural households, these structural limitations, in fact, act as big stumbling blocks to women empowerment.

And, TARAhaat has been specifically launched to overcome these very limitations – limitations of reach, of access, of affordability and of non-availability of adequate opportunities – through a network of franchised information-cum-education kiosks ( called ‘TARAkendras’) located in rural areas which intend to bridge the ever-widening divide between the haves and have-not.

Therefore, when the opportunity came knocking on their doors, the women (women in the age group of 12-30) of the villages of Bathinda and Bundelkhand (region covering districts of UP and MP) grabbed it with both the hands.

If it was the sheer desire of Pinki , the eldest of the now famous ‘Punavali sisters’, to bring about a change in her village (Punavali Kalan in Jhansi district of UP) through the use of Information Technology, then it was the matching dynamism and enterprise of Pinki’s younger siblings, Rajmani and Priti, who seized upon this golden opportunity to set-up a TARAkendra in their village. It is because of the grit and determination of the three sisters that the TARAkendra in Punavali is not only running but also progressing well.

With the setting up of TARAkendras computer literate girls, in places where these kendras are located, who were till now jobless for want of opportunity and were also not in a position to set up their own TARAkendra, like Punavali Sisters, due to some reason or the other, found employment as instructors/centre managers/Counsellors.

Even Bundelkhand, a backward region, has not been far behind. All the 5 Kendras, at present, can boast of a women owner/instructor/counsellor. In fact, 2 instructors in Bundelkhand, Priti at TARAgram and Shaila in Niwari are a product of the TARAhaat system itself. Both these girls were earlier students of TARAhaat.

Not far behind were the girls of these two regions, more specifically Punjab, in getting themselves enrolled in these TARAkendras for computer education and Internet access.

In fact, of all the TARAkendras that have been set-up in Bundelkhand (region covering districts of UP & MP) and Bathinda (Punjab) as a part of the pilot project, at one point of time last year, the number of girl students had far outstripped (60 girls compered to 40 boys) the number of boys in one of the kendras in Bathinda. In other Kendras also girls are not far behind in terms of enrolment. Till date more than 200 girls have completed their Basic IT Course (offered in Hindi and Punjabi), comprising MS-Office and Internet, from the TARAkendras.

The numbers might be small and the course very simple but the numbers always do not reflect the true picture. There is much more to the story than just numbers. Of the 700 odd students, including 200 girls, who have completed their Basic Information Technology (BIT) Course till now, more than 80% had not even seen a computer before they joined these TARAkendras. Most, if not all, had always nurtured this false belief that computer is like a ghost or something very complicated to learn and they, given their kind of educational and parental background, would never be able to learn how to operate it. But the myth had to be exploded. It took a while and a determined effort from everyone at TARAhaat, right from the top to the bottom, before it got exploded to the pleasant surprise of all concerned including students.

Explosion of this simple myth from the minds of these students, more so of the girl students, meant increased self-confidence and self-esteem, more active level of participation in learning and sending positive message to other fellow friends and students (also parents) who were initially reluctant to join for the fear of not knowing English.

For the students, it also meant the joy of not only having acquired a skill that puts them at par with their urban counter-parts but also for having acquired the power to get the information of their choice at the click of a mouse.

These results, based on experiments in the field, paint a very positive and compelling picture about the changes taking place in rural India – fast changing mindsets of the rural folks who are now more than willing to send their daughters to learn new things, encouraging girls/women in the families to take to self-employment and enabling them to stand on their own feet etc. And where else can one find a classic example of such a scenario than Punavali Kalan, Jhansi.