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."

Comments

shouldn't be using ichat for surgery

[Anonymous Coward]

"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??"

Cynicism is so convenient

[fm6]

Your attitude towards technology is simplistic. Do you think people can have clean water without technology? That stuff that comes out of your kitchen tap doesn't appear by magic.

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.

Dot com disease.

[ratfynk]

For some reason or other I think the Indians would look at some of these posts and shake their heads. Appropriate cost effective tech is all important to Indians, haggling the cost of things is a way of life in India and most are quite proud of the fact. To do something cheaper and more efficiently is an Indian strong point. Just look where some of the most brilliant math scientists and technicians are coming from today.

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.