Slashdot Mirror
Networking Technology At Work In Rural India
abhikhurana writes "Whenever a news item about a plan to offer aid to a poor community in a developing country to set up an Internet backbone or any similar story is posted on Slashdot, there is always a debate among the readers if there is any point in spending so much money on such activities when people in such communities don't have basic amenities like clean drinking water. So when I came acorss this story,
I decided to post it to slashdot. It's about new software developed by Indian Institute of
Technology, Chennai, which allows video conferencing on low-bandwidth connections, and the impact this technology is having
on the small rural communities where it has been deployed."
Why do the people of rural India need videoconferencing?
Hell, I live in San Diego, California and I don't need video conferencing. And more to the point I don't want it either.
I had a good chat with my secondary school classmate about the idea of education voucher, who happens to be an economist, a few days ago. I argued that it is one of the ideas that makes good economic sense, but will fail in the real world. While the schools can introduce say, scholarship, to help the poorer students, the immense feeling of disparity in the society....
The e-education for basic education is not that health. What will the village children think about the teacher? Are we so untouchable that even the teacher do not want to be with us? It is really bad for the children mentally. Although retaining highly qualified teacher is hard for rural community in developing world, you don't really need a university graduate for teach rural primary school either...
> Can we drop phrases like "Banana Republic"? It's pretty patronizing.
Nah. Living in Australia, the land of the Banana Republic, led by President Bonsai[1], who is controlled by ARIA[2] and voted in by people who hate his policies just show that banana republics are going quite well in this age of technology.
Unless, of course, you were implying that is was patronizing to banana growers.
[1] - the Australian Labour Party front bench has started calling John Howard "bonsai" because he is a "baby Bush".
[2] - ARIA, the Australian record industry assoc. (baby RIAA)
it is only after a long journey that you know the strength of the horse.