Slashdot Mirror

But what about those 1 billion people (ok, number out of ass, but you get the point) that are starving to death and live in horrible conditions? Every time I read a comment like this, I don't know what to say.

Do you know what is the single biggest thing that has helped poor farmers all across India? Please visit http://www.echoupal.com/

It is a website for small farmers. Even for those farmers who don't have Internet, there are kiosks in villages where volunteers explain them and help them use the website.

Using this, the farmers network and help each other solve problems. Single biggest benefit of this has been spotting and eliminating corrupt middlemen who give unfairly low price to farmers and sell it for high price to traders. This one advantage is worth entire effort behind this initiative.

Unfortunately Western media does not find these stories interesting. They love to show poor hungry children begging for food. Then they get to portray the Western world as the noble minded donor.

The truth is even poor people want to work hard and improve their lifestyle. Information technology, Internet, communication infrastructure, is what will give them a chance. It is absolutely right thing if a poor country with a billion hungry people launches satellites. It is better than a rich country launching wars.

But what about those 1 billion people (ok, number out of ass, but you get the point) that are starving to death and live in horrible conditions? Every time I read a comment like this, I don't know what to say.

Do you know what is the single biggest thing that has helped poor farmers all across India? Please visit http://www.echoupal.com/

It is a website for small farmers. Even for those farmers who don't have Internet, there are kiosks in villages where volunteers explain them and help them use the website.

Using this, the farmers network and help each other solve problems. Single biggest benefit of this has been spotting and eliminating corrupt middlemen who give unfairly low price to farmers and sell it for high price to traders. This one advantage is worth entire effort behind this initiative.

Unfortunately Western media does not find these stories interesting. They love to show poor hungry children begging for food. Then they get to portray the Western world as the noble minded donor.

The truth is even poor people want to work hard and improve their lifestyle. Information technology, Internet, communication infrastructure, is what will give them a chance. It is absolutely right thing if a poor country with a billion hungry people launches satellites. It is better than a rich country launching wars. India has done a fantastic thing....
congrats tot he scientists and Engineers of India for achieving it....

One of the sat is dedicated for third world countries I think...

Great...

But what about those 1 billion people (ok, number out of ass, but you get the point) that are starving to death and live in horrible conditions? Every time I read a comment like this, I don't know what to say.

Do you know what is the single biggest thing that has helped poor farmers all across India? Please visit http://www.echoupal.com/

It is a website for small farmers. Even for those farmers who don't have Internet, there are kiosks in villages where volunteers explain them and help them use the website.

Using this, the farmers network and help each other solve problems. Single biggest benefit of this has been spotting and eliminating corrupt middlemen who give unfairly low price to farmers and sell it for high price to traders. This one advantage is worth entire effort behind this initiative.

Unfortunately Western media does not find these stories interesting. They love to show poor hungry children begging for food. Then they get to portray the Western world as the noble minded donor.

The truth is even poor people want to work hard and improve their lifestyle. Information technology, Internet, communication infrastructure, is what will give them a chance. It is absolutely right thing if a poor country with a billion hungry people launches satellites. It is better than a rich country launching wars.

But what about those 1 billion people (ok, number out of ass, but you get the point) that are starving to death and live in horrible conditions? Every time I read a comment like this, I don't know what to say.

Do you know what is the single biggest thing that has helped poor farmers all across India? Please visit http://www.echoupal.com/

It is a website for small farmers. Even for those farmers who don't have Internet, there are kiosks in villages where volunteers explain them and help them use the website.

Using this, the farmers network and help each other solve problems. Single biggest benefit of this has been spotting and eliminating corrupt middlemen who give unfairly low price to farmers and sell it for high price to traders. This one advantage is worth entire effort behind this initiative.

Unfortunately Western media does not find these stories interesting. They love to show poor hungry children begging for food. Then they get to portray the Western world as the noble minded donor.

The truth is even poor people want to work hard and improve their lifestyle. Information technology, Internet, communication infrastructure, is what will give them a chance. It is absolutely right thing if a poor country with a billion hungry people launches satellites. It is better than a rich country launching wars. India has done a fantastic thing....
congrats tot he scientists and Engineers of India for achieving it....

One of the sat is dedicated for third world countries I think...

Great...

But what about those 1 billion people (ok, number out of ass, but you get the point) that are starving to death and live in horrible conditions?

Every time I read a comment like this, I don't know what to say.

Do you know what is the single biggest thing that has helped poor farmers all across India? Please visit http://www.echoupal.com/

It is a website for small farmers. Even for those farmers who don't have Internet, there are kiosks in villages where volunteers explain them and help them use the website.

Using this, the farmers network and help each other solve problems. Single biggest benefit of this has been spotting and eliminating corrupt middlemen who give unfairly low price to farmers and sell it for high price to traders. This one advantage is worth entire effort behind this initiative.

Unfortunately Western media does not find these stories interesting. They love to show poor hungry children begging for food. Then they get to portray the Western world as the noble minded donor.

The truth is even poor people want to work hard and improve their lifestyle. Information technology, Internet, communication infrastructure, is what will give them a chance. It is absolutely right thing if a poor country with a billion hungry people launches satellites. It is better than a rich country launching wars.

The problem with most of the people posting is that most of them have never been to India let alone know what are the problems of the people.

A solution can only be given if you know the problem well enough.

So bringing my Indian perspective, i would like to bring to notice to the other slashdotters that there a plenty of initiatives to bring the fruits of the IT revolution to the masses.

Check out e-choupal(some of the site is in Hindi) which aims to bridge the logistics gap between rural producers and markets. It is a run away success and the company which started it ITC is planning to roll it out in 10,000 villages. Another innovative e-goverance project is Gyandoot (Messenger of Knowledge). This aims to bring the government closer to the people. In all these cases low-cost PCs ($400 ones) not PDAs have proven to be useful.

These are just some examples where IT has been proven to be useful in the rural hinterland obviously much more needs to be done as there are over 700,000 villages in India.

The problem in India is often not the lack of resources (India today is one of the world's largest economies, one of the fastest growing, has one of the biggest reserves of over $86 billion) but mismanagement and corruption, and add to it restrictive trade practices of the West. It is then no wonder that most Indian farmers are stuck in the 18th century.

While researching for my paper most of the problems of the basic needs can be solved if the rural people have access to cheap and plentiful source of power- electricity. Ask any farmer what is the one thing they need which they can use to improve their lives almost all reply "electricity" - to run everything from water-pumps to computers. Even though now most of the Indian villages are electrified, the sad condition of the state-run electricity boards means that they get power only for a few hours if at all.

Off-grid community solutions like bio-gas have a lot of potential if implemented. In conclusion PDAs may be cool to look at but the real need is for electricity.