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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."
"Doc? Doc? Hey you there? I've got the kidney in my left hand and the crowbar in my right?"
Doctor on other side of the world..."Hey, iChat a/v went down again, what the hell does 'beta' mean anyway??"
Dude, if a community can't afford water, how is it going to afford e-anything?
...wrote in one of his books about a banana republic where a program was introduced to help every family in the country to purchase and learn to use a helicopter, because it would come out way cheaper than building the network of roads through the jungle between scattered settlements.
So true... Often modern technology is simply cheaper than the "simple" stuff. Think cellular phones in areas without standard phone networks...
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Education
Really, how many teachers are motivated to help the unfortunate, but not so motivated as to live in a poor village?
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
I understand that utilizing the existing infrastructure is key in these sorts of projects, but I really have one question
Why do the people of rural India need videoconferencing?
It woul be much more suitable for scientific outposts in remote places in the world where the people can utilize the conferencing technology along with other data compression schemes to increase their "connectivity".
MMORPG fan-boy? Prove your worth
Maybe you can partner this up with cheap WiFi and some solar powered WiFi repeaters.
You could also have one attending physician in charge of many physician assitants in many small towns, instead of just using it for teaching.
I suspect Lem was being satrical. But it's not news that countries with no infrastructure often leapfrog more developed nations. I'm told that Indonesia never built an earth-based telephone infrastructure, because by the time they could afford to do it, it was cheaper to get their own comsats. And we've all seen the way the Third World has embraced cell phones and text messaging.
The census of India 2001 ( a site Site Optimised for Netscape! )came out recently and is covered in India Today ( this article is not free however. Check your local library for a copy of the magazine. Its very interesting)
The 2001 Census data has information on Houses, Household Amenities and Assets in India and has very interesting findings. It seems there are some 2.4 million places of worship in the country, as against 1.5 million schools and colleges and a mere 600,000 hospitals and dispensaries. No wonder there is so much unnecessary religious strife.
The point is, there is a lot of opportunity for growth and innovative technology is greatly needed there to increase the level of education and quality of life there. The question of which technology is most needed first is very difficult to answer.
New year Resolution: Don't change sig this year
WRONG.
Before you get all of the above which are very very expensive, as in 100s of millions of dollars. You have to find some sort of way to be productive like sewing textiles or above subsitance farming or factory production, etc. Any successful development story starts with the fact that the country or region in question made something first that people wanted and then it developed. If you build all this infrastructure wherever, as soon as the money stops flowing in, and it would have to flow in permanently and forever, it would all fall apart. This has happened over and over again in Sub-Saharan African and else where.
The problem with introducing technology into the underdeveloped countries is not the technology itself, but the way it's applied. Typically, it comes from some industrial-world aid agency that simply doesn't understand local conditions. They'll invent complicated systems that attempt to duplicate features of Western infrastructre, without considering prerequisites that a less developed country doesn't have.
Some years back, there was a big push to build factories in Africa to process Sunflower seeds into oil. This would have connected a resource (lots of African farmers grow sunflowers) with an unmet need (lots of Africans needs to consume more vegetable fat). All the money was essentially wasted: the factories couldn't sustain themselves without huge subsidies. It cost too much to transport the seeds to the factories and the oil to the consumers, especially in areas with bad roads, corrupt local officials, etc.
A better solution came from an inventor in Vermont: a cheap sunflower seed press. Sell them to farmers so they can process the seeds themselves, and sell the oil to their neighbors. The whole process is economically self-sustaining: farmers pay for the presses with profits from their oil, and profits from the presses pay for more presses. The only problem they had starting up was getting a grant to develop the press. It seems that nobody was prepared to fund a development effort that only ran to $30,000...
The bottom line is that technology can solve third-world problems. It just has to be the right technology.
People are homeless.
Gah! If it wasn't for technology like the Internet or TV you wouldn't know they were hungry (probably could by mail, but Americans are too lazy to become involved in mailed communication).
If it were for airplanes, you couldn't drop food shipments.
Priorities are fine. Food versus technology isa not prioritizing. It's basic neanderthal wanking pretending they're better because they're supposedly more concerned.
Luddite morons.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
It's not about the application, it's about the infrastructure.
It's a poor country. What better way to improve the economy than to provide them with technology that allows them to be productive and earn a living even from such remote places?
A bit of training and you have potentially thousands of Google Answers researchers, or chat-room moderators, or whatever jobs suitable for large amounts of low-qualified, low-wage work force who can work remotely online.
It's the logical step following the call-centres movement.
Why do the people of Slashdot ask dumb questions without reading the article?
Since you're probably long gone I'll summarize for you:
0. In rural India, it's often really hard to get to places due to very poor roads, that get washed out in the rain, and the population is very broadly distributed on farms.
1. A teacher in the city can educate children in a rural area. (viz., telecommuting)
2. Doctors can run virtual clinics for villagers to give them medical advice.
3. Scientists can have meetings with local farmers to give them crop advice.
All of these things are IN DEMAND by the people who had a chance to try them out.
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No India will find a way of employing tech that will be radically different than the West. You can bet that they will learn from our mistakes caused by dot com stupidity and greed. No dot com debacle for them. The gold rush is over, we are about to lose out because we do not know how to be realistic in our commerce. We do not see the importance of the changes in the world economy.
The concept of a GNP is not a concept of economic growth, and to say that growth in GNP is a measure of developement is a falacious assumption, especially in countries like India of China.
To assume that this tech is expensive is rediculous, the cost of sending messangers, sending teachers to remote areas, Doctors, technicians,
administraters, health nurses, more than offsets the cost of the tech and equipment. Our problem in the west is that everything computer has to have bells, whistles, video candy, and super fast expensive communication tech. Funny but simple video communication that we have been able to do since the early 1990s will catch on and be a great boom for India. We ignored it because we didn't care to use it for anything other than goofy web garbage cam and it did not entertain us sufficiantly. We are becoming a shallow silly
over endulged bunch of brain dead consumers and it shows. Most of the rest of the world doesn't envy us, they fear, and some pity our greed.
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
> more important things like improving their culture?
> First, introduce modern culture and modern notions of morality;
Aren't we the self-declared pundits on barbarism and modernism. If you mean not having an MTV culture, not wiping out the indegenous people but co-existing with them, not having hate groups like KKK (don't winch) mean India has a barbaric culture, then you must be right. Unlike some countries, civilization in India has been around for more than 5000 years, so it has to be barbaric, right?
But first, please get some basic facts about India straight:
1. Despite being exploited and oppressed by the British for more than 200 years, India is not going astray. She has one of the strongest democracies in the world. For example, when the Prime Minister of India declared that he wanted to help US out with troops in Iraq, major public disapproval forced the govt. to act otherwise. In 50 years after independence, India has managed to put up more than a handful of industries. Excess food is exported, and donated to UN. There is a burgeoning middle class, which is now threatening to take jobs away from countries like US. All this in FIFTY years, starting from the uneducated, impoverished, totally undeveloped state that the British managed to keep India in.
2. India does not have one culture. There are more cultures co-existing in India than you can find in Europe.
3. Unlike some cultures which like to fry criminals, Indian society is very tolerant. Which is probably why people committing anti-female atrocities still walk around.
There are plenty of areas where the country is performing fairly pitifully, i agree. Like female infanticide, as you mentioned. Let me assure you it is not as widespread as you think it is. But that is not the point. The point is why infanticide is present in the first place ? Because parents think girls will be a burden to them: they cannot earn a living doing physical labor. Which is why technology is so important. You have to show the older generation that it is possible to make a living without becomming a construction laborer or working on a farm. You have to show them that in the modern world, females have as much chance of sustaining themselves as the males.
I am saying this most respectfully-- most westerners, including those writers sitting in air-conditioned rooms at WSJ, do not know $hit about the third world. If you want a better understanding of the workings of a very complex society like India's, please drop by sometime. We will even have plenty of bottled water for you, don't worry. Till then, adios with a parting message:
We do not eat frog brains, we do not make soup with monkey eyes floating in it, and we do not jump around from tree to tree.