Slashdot Mirror
India's Digital Village
sirdude writes "Business Week has a pretty comprehensive story on the impact of projects such as Bhoomi, which are slowly but surely bridging the digital divide in rural India. With entrepreneurial initiatives such as e-choupal, Simputer, and a multitude of other privately-funded projects also beginning to take root, the rural Indian (who comprises about 70% of India's population), is slowly inching his way into the information age. The rest of the third world is watching & waiting, and taking detailed notes :)" And the parts about computerized land records may remind anyone who's read it of Hernando De Soto's The Mystery of Capital .
This will work brilliantly until someone decides to outsource it to California...
BHOOMI patents the process of "online updation".
Even most amenities are computerised, the time it takes for something to be done is so slow. take for instance the railway reservation which is computerised in india. still it takes 1-2 hours standing in the queue to get the ticket. i think digitalization is of no use if it is in no way improving your life.
No wonder the USA is outsourcing to India, its just supporting it's native population!
Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
Aristotele
In any case, instead of simputer.org, maybe you wanted this instead? It seems simputer.org's tech specs are out of date. I'm drooling over the 4200.
[o]_O
Given the these facts About 70% of the people live in more than 550,000 villages, and the remainder in more than 200 towns and cities.
Source-O-Factoids
My cat's picked up a Hammer. HEY! Put down that Hammer. Put Down that Hamm...THUNK!
Interestingly, although the copied article text is accurately reproduced according to Araxis Merge, and well-typeset, the original article doesn't actually appear to be "subscriber-only." I have no problems accessing it, and I surely don't have a subscription. A bizarre post, this parent.
The Indian Government is sponsoring a couple of projects which aim at improving the agricultural and living conditions of rural India through the use of Information and Communication Technologies(ICTs). I am currently working as a system developer for one such project, Web-based Information Dissemination System. Nice to see govt. of India taking an inititative, finally.
Don't I seem to recall that in the last election in India, heads rolled because rural residents(who were by far the majority) were pissed off at getting left behind?
This strikes me as a "don't feel guilty about the fact that your Indian employees make 50 times what the rural Indian farmer does" article.
And- furthermore-, rural Indian farmers don't need goddamn "ruggedized" linux-flavored PDAs. Clothe them. Get them running water. Get them something resembling health care. Employ them. Educate them. Roughly in that order. Notice nowhere in there was "give them gameboys so they can check their land ownership status".
Not that we're any better in the US. Teachers may have a PC in every classroom or a shiny lab of computers, but students have to share copies of the book they're reading.
Please help metamoderate.
Might it be an automated article-scraper? That would be a very interesting thing to contemplate, as unlikely as it seems. Perhaps even useful, under certain circumstances.
Also, the bulk of people are against technology and change, as seen in the last elections. They want the old government which promotes anarchy and curruption. So, they will get what they want. Oh come on! every other govt in the world is corrupt. True its a bit worse in India, but what makes you say that people are against technology? rampant anarchy? developments will be quenched pretty soon? pretty harsh there buddy. look at the technology growth in the past 10 years. Telecom, roadways, railways(for crying out loud India has the largest railroad network), computers... this is dispite the so called "anarchy" you mentioned.
Internet users relative to population:
USA: approx 54%
Australia: approx 50%
India: approx 2%
Source: CIA Factbook
I wonder how xscreensaver's Bouncing Cow will go over?
0xB315AA8D852DCD3F3DCA578FD2E0BF88
As an Indian-American immigrant I'm both pleased and a bit scared ;) my bros are taking my job -- just joking, but in all honestly, seeing how hard my parents worked as 1st gen immigrants to the US, if the poor people in India all of a sudden learn English (decent - not great i'll admit) and computers, you can watch the salaries of programmers in the US stagnate (due to more outsourcing... it's hard to compete with $1 a day for web design - joke :) don't take yourselves so seriuosly slashdotters - you can always get a job at BlockBuster like me).
on the other hand, it's good that possibly 100-200 million poor poor people (these people maybe have $5 to their name) have a chance to improve their lives - desperate poverty is hard to escape and anything that offers a meager chance of a better life will be studied and digested by them. I hope that they aren't exploited and put into white collar sweat-shops where their job pays them a couple dollars and then most of it goes into "paying" for the computer they are using to do their job (another enless cycle of 'white-collar' poverty) - it's believeable in India because when you have absolutely nothing (not even food) you are willing to do pretty much anything to eat or to have a job. And if you don't like it there are 10-15 people willing to fill your spot. But hopefully by that time, the country's legal system will get a bit better and it can be prevented.
This is absolutely not a troll, its a perfectly serious question.
Pre-empting all the knee jerk posters who will claim that rural Indians need food and water first, let me inform you that India already overproduces food; the problem is that the rural folk don't have purchasing power. And the reason they don't is that they don't have tech, and are therefore totally dependent on the urban/industrial sector. So if they are to get food they need more technology, which is what the Indian gov't is trying to do.
Those Telecoms, roadways and railways are there to make it easier to abuse the abundant, expendable labor; not to help that labor. Any improvement to the general populace's standard of living is strictly coincidental. But in defense of you're post, I don't think it's so much that India's gov't is any more corrupt, it's that in a poor nation the negative impact of that corruption is more pronounced. Basically, any human society is going to have a certain amount of it's population living like Kings, with the rest fighting over the scraps. It's just a question of which society has the best scraps.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I work for a company in germany which employed 3 people from india with the greencard system 4 years ago. We were 20 germans and 3 indish people. All I can tell you is that we had quite a hard time getting used to them because of their different mentality and their different way to work on projects. It's also hard to tell them something because they feel quite upset quickly or feel like we would be doing this on purpose to nitpick them. We worked with them for nearly half a year until our boss saw that the problems were bigger than he initially thought.
He thought to have hired some perfect geeks with deeper technology skills but he realized that this was wrong. They lack knowledge in nearly every area, they had pretty much communication problems because of bad english, if you told them to comment the code they work on then they exactly did not comment anything, also the produced code was in no way reusable for other projects or structured or far from any logic. Our boss wasted quite some money on them because their demands are quite differently than ours. We here in germany deal with high quality things, project working, and we have quite a high responsibility to our customers who pay us well.
We now hired 2 germans and we can work perfectly with them.
Well the other side of the medal is, that I think that india's IT industry is quite a hype, we have enough and even better skilled people in our own country even if they cost us a bit more but the resulting work is better. We deal with our own people, we keep our own money in our own country, we work with same mentality of people, they know us, we know them.
It's important for every nation to keep their roots of IT industry, the same way silicon valley made it's name years ago as one of the best business for IT stuff, the same way MIT had it's quality name or germany had it's high name, the same way we need to protect those.
India is not the country of geeky IT gurus, it's just a shabby country as every other country we must and we need to stop believing that everything that comes from India is valued as gold. A lot of their stuff is quite uselesss and doesn't fit our standards of quality.
Of course, we can always point to the negative and say stuff like "what about:
rooting out corruption?
solving the water scarcity problem?
controlling pollution?"
etc. etc. I am not saying that we should ignore these problems and think the Digital Village is the greatest thing to happen in India. All I am saying is that we should appreciate the efforts and keep on workin to do more good deeds, not belittle the efforts by pointing out existing problems.
After all, quoting the Batman: "There will always be problems, but every problem has a solution."
And what, pray, the hell, is 'Indish'? You spent some time reading about our culture and economy, and don't know that the word is 'Indian'? Makes one wonder about your sources.
... Nazis, that is. Indians *don't* think they're the only right humans on the globe, or that our religion is the only right religion. (Oh, and I'm a Christian, btw.) Where'd you get this crap?
The rest of this post is even more ridiculous - it should be (-1, Flamebait) at best. The caste system was abolished a while ago... it's still prevalent in some parts of rural India, but it's illegal. If some people still feel uncomfortable about inter-caste marriage, etc., so what? There are people in the US who are uncomfortable with inter-racial marriages. Does that mean that the US is a fundamentally racist country? There are bigots, conservatives, and liberals in any group.
Oh, and it gets better. We're National Sozialists
Forget it... I don't even know why I'm dignifying this with a reply.
Looks like, in a few years, India might be outsourcing it's IT to America
:-)
I've never shoed a horse, but I once told a donkey to piss off!
I started to spent some time reading about the Indish culture and econmoy, and figured out that they have a casts system there
As if there is no racism in so-called "developed" nations!
and that 2/3 of their people are suffering and starving and live in the poorest possible conditions while some of them are quite rich.
As if all the developed nations enjoy great equality.
They also have a strange sense of politics and a strange view of themselves being the only right humans on this globe (we could say national sozialism mentality) e.g. their religion is the best religion, their culture is the pure culture, their knowledge is the right knowledge, their busines is the best busines and so on.
Bother to give some proof for the same? I would be delighted. BTW, there is nothing such as Indian Culture. India has large population of religions other than Hindu. They follow their own culture. Care to show such a wide diversity in any other country?
It's quite ignorant and disrespectful if it comes to other people, other mentality, respecting other humans on this globe - and yet the IT industry stuffs money up their butt.
Hey, take a break. Contribution of Indian IT exports in global market is a measly 2%. The outgo of "rich" nations is still small to India.
What do you little brown and garlic smelling indian faggot want ? your country is full of shit. see your vajpayee the biggest national sozialist i ever was allowed to see on tv. after watching that documentary i came to the conclusion that all you idian prics are full of shit.
Could anyone elaborate on the state of the Simputer nowadays? I believed the project was dead!
There have been many articles about India and computers which I had considered to be more of a fad than any real use. However, since I am from Bangalore, Karnataka, I confidently feel that this is one of the best computerization efforts.
Karnataka had a lot (and still continues to have) land disputes, that should never have happened. Many are simple cases of forgery that become complicated by corrupt/incompetent officials, non-transparent machinery. I see computerization as a good tool to increase transparency, thereby reducing corruption. With computerization, it is actually possible to query the database and ensure that one deed does not overlap another deed.
Corruption can never be solved by technology. But, if technology is implemented well, it can empower common people (which, in this case, includes me, since I plan to own land in the near future) to fight back against corruption.
What I am most afraid of, is that power is effectively transferred from corrupt officials to the companies who write/manage the software. So, even if the software companies may be free from corruption, it may not hold good for too long, since "power corrupts". A good criteria would be how transparent is the database.
However, from what I know, this particular project is a very good initiative, and one of the few projects that can be showcased as an example of computerization that can help the rural poor. True, software cannot feed hungry people, but it can empower them to grow the own food.
The Hindu culture does include the notorious caste system, but it is not as bad as it is made out to be. For the most part, the caste system is dead in urban areas. It does exist in rural areas, but that is because rural areas have always been a haven for traditional values and culture, in every country.
According to the CIA World Factbook, only a quarter (2002 est.) is below the poverty line, and this is declining rapidly. Israel has 18% below the poverty line, so claims of India's poor social
and economic state are exaggerated.
ALL countries believe their way is the right/best way, be it EU, US, UK, Australia, China, India or even Iraq. It's not nationalist socialist; it's simply patroitism. It's just a different form of the "We're #1" tagline.
Having been to India (rather than just reading about it), I can tell you that Indians are generally respectful of all customs and peoples, as it is a multi-cultural and diverse place. There will obviously be extremists who are narrow-minded, but every country has those.
The "Rush to India" as it were is not about nationalism, or hype. It's about money. India offers similiar services for less.
The last elections were not a mandate against technology and change, but rather a mandate against the insensitive, block-headed policies of the previous government.. a government which couldn't see past its own rhetoric and coined the phrase "India Shining" which was an insult to the vast majority of Indians whose living standards had not improved but instead had worsened.
It is fine and dandy to talk about IT, fancy cars, fancy electronics but when your talk also indicates an attitude of utter disregard for people who were committing suicides due to poverty caused primarily because of governmental negligence, then we have the classic scenario where an old phrase fits - the case of an insult upon injury.
The people of India, for once, decided not to tolerate that.
See Subject
A very dogmatic way to look at the situation. The people overthrew the previous government because rural development was ignored. Claiming that the rural people in India are against technolgy per se is a bigoted opinion. People will always accept technology if it is beneficial to them, whichever land they may come from.
well now, even if some of these projects invite some satire or sarcasm on /. or whether people make foolish observations of "rampant anarchy", etc, the fact remains such projects have been slowly adding up to the nation's wealth, and have been contributing towards improving the quality of life bit by bit:
1. For the uninitiated, India's general elections (which is the world's largest democracy) were carried out using Electronic Voting Machines, and there were no problems relating to counting or whatever. This has previously been covered here
2. India has posted a growth of 10.2% in the last fiscal year, and the new Finance Minister is expected to target even higher growth
3. Projects like Simputer might not attract customers from more developed countries, but then they are targeted and priced for the local masses.
4. eChoupal is an initiative to provide farmers of India all the information, products and services they need to enhance farm productivity, improve farm-gate price realisation and cut transaction costs.
These are just an example of the country-wide measures being adopted as the country is slowly geared towards economic well-being
http://efil.blogspot.com/
dude... its YOUR comments that reek of racism! but let me give you the benefit of doubt and just say that you simply got hold of the wrong sources (of the worst kind!) to know about india.
as regards to computerization, it is slowly but surely improving peoples life. yes, you still need to stand in a railway line for half an hour but can you neglect the HUGE population these services cater to?! besides, i can have my rail ticket delivered at home by booking over the internet and paying less than a dollar extra for it. so, no lines for me, ever!
those who talk about "providing bread before pda" - HOW EXACTLY do you provide bread? As "humanitarian" aid that you drop from helicopters after you have finished dropping bombs?!! this technology btw IS helping the farmers grow their own bread more efficiently.
The parent post should be marked flamebait.
New technologies will not suit the currupt and they are the one's who usually have the power to decide what stays and what doesn't.
Although I do agree with the poster's statement, s/he also seems to say that India is at this level. And that's just plain wrong. There lots of parts of India, without access to basic resources, and will continue to be that way for the next 15-20 years if the staus quo prevails. However, that does not prevent the march of technology. As observed in many thrid-world countries, the Mobile Phone base in India is set to overtake Landlines some time this year - why? Because as the parent says, getting landline WAS (and is now only partially) involved dealign with corrupt officials. Whereas getting a mobile phone requires at the most 17 hours of your time in total. Why would these corrupt people want to encourage the use of a technology which has broken their monopoly on communication? Could it be because not all of India is full of these evil corrupt people, and that OVERALL, the Rule of Law is respected in that country, despite the occasional aberrations?Now a person maybe homeless or living in a slum, but the mobile is in the reach of these people. If I could post pictures, I'd prove it to you, but of course somebody would just say that I paid the homeless person to smile into the camera. I've noticed that for some particular reason there is a malicious campaign to discredit India, at every opportunity. Note how most posts about India go:
--Insert positive statement about India here -- followed by "But India is full of poor peeople, and everybody is hungry and starving and won't be able to afford anything anyway"
Finally, only a fool would claim to know what the People's verdict was the last Indian General Election. Even the current ruling political party doesn't claim it has the People's Mandate. the only thing we know for a fact is that BJP lost. But nobody won. And it's no rejection of economic reform, because everybody knows that Congress was the first party to start economic reform. Finally, technological progress in India is never rejected. It is simply rejected in its Western form, then over a large or small time period adapted to Indian standards, culture and society. When satelite Television started of India, it was considered a threat to Indian culture, because all ti showed were American programs, with American newscasters and americans sports. Then within a year or two of its launch, it was showing Indian music on MTV, Cricket on the Sports channels, and purely Indian content on the entertainment channels (alongside the American and British stuff).
Dunno why I bothered to respond to the flamebait, but I did....
My Favourite Meme
What a load of crap. Who is going to build those railways and roads? Who is going travel by them? Apparently slave labour, judging by your post. Person A is living in a village, which has no roads connecting it to a big city, or a railway line. If person A gets struck by a debilitating disease, how is s/he going to get access to supplies, food, healthcare? By magic? Oh sorry, this all to exploit labour. This parent post should be marked flamebait too.
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The first person to refer to Nazis loose!3 339/3949
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/6/30/3
There were several code exchange schemes during the dot-com era (late 90s/early 00s), most of which went bust thanks to Indian programmers. The idea was that programmers opened accounts with these firms and programmed modules (each module worth a certain amount of money), thereby keeping the intellectual property safe by distributing small parts of it to different programmers, as well as improving efficiency by allowing the programmers in question to earn money per module. These schemes also had other advantages for programmers, such as allowing them to work whenever they wanted and do as much or as little as they wanted.
However, there were certain conditions, one of which was that modules that were taken on had to be completed in a certain amount of time, and the modules in question needed to be functional and concise - usually a certain number of bad modules in a row would freeze an account.
The schemes worked well for a while, but were soon drowned in applications from Indian programmers, and a lot of the frozen accounts were attributed to Indian programmers who either couldn't understand the modules' specifications, or couldn't code cleanly. Soon the overhead of freezing and dealing with new Indian accounts caught up with these schemes and they were slowly phased out, with only a tiny minority making comebacks or surviving (for example, Fusebox uses a very similar methodology to these schemes).
It's quite ironic that now, a few years later, companies are once again putting their faith in Indian programmers - I wonder how long it'll take before everything collapses again.
Also, the bulk of people are against technology and change, as seen in the last elections. They want the old government which promotes anarchy and curruption. So, they will get what they want
/, etc. NOT a anarchy?
Yeah, right. The bulk of people wanted better livelihood and wages. Technology was just the next logical step. The previous govt. ignored the first two needs and focused on the third instead.
Tell me, is the present US Govt. curroption-free? If so, why the issue about the nexus between conglomerates and the administration? How are the efforts to suppress information / profile people
Yes, people will get what they want. So be happy and get drunk.
I didn't want to do this earlier, but so what if Vajpayee was a Nazi? Whether he was or wasn't is a matter of debate (and I voted against his party in the last election, which they lost).
For the sake of argument, let's assume that Vajpayee was a Nazi. Does that mean that all Indians are? Hitler was a Nazi, but I don't believe that all Germans are Nazis. In fact, (personal opinion here) that kind of ideology might get less support in Germany than in many other countries. So what happened? Hitler coming to power was a mistake. By the same logic, Vajpayee and the BJP (his party) coming to power was a mistake, which the Indian voter corrected in the last elections. So how does that make us Nazi again?
Mahatma Gandhi, an Indian, pioneered the concept of non-violence. That doesn't mean all Indians believe that non-violence is the solution to everything. Some of us might believe in non-violence, and others in Nazism, and others in the tooth fairy. But it's ridiculous to generalise to 'Indians are Nazis.'
Out of curiosity, which documentary was that? (And I'm genuinely curious, I would like to know)
I'm an American, and I know quite a few Indians, and they tell me that government in India is very corrupt. They have even shown me articles from online editions of Indian newspapers lamenting the situation. It seems to me that government corruption in India is a very real problem, and until the people there are able to do something about it, it will hamper India's efforts to truly modernize their entire society. Note that I have never been to India, so I don't know any of this first hand. However, as I mentioned, my Indian friends volunteer this information to me. So I suspect that the problem is a bit more serious than you seem to be suggesting.
The best diplomat I know is a fully activated phaser bank.
-- Scotty.
Care to quote the sentence that shows the word 'indish' ?
Maybe you should try contracting your business out to a respected company like Infosys, Wipro, TCS, HCL, Satyam, instead of going with Ashok's Acme Software House. But then you people are prone to big generalisations and malice....
My Favourite Meme
Largest Railway Network? You mean the one designed and implemented by the British? The one that's spent the past decade upgrading equipment, some of it pre-Indpendance?
You see buddy, you just discredited yourself. Have you Been to India? So just because you got fed shit by a bunch of people who left India to make more money, it must be the truth. Some of us happen to live here, like yours truly. And the corruption here USED to be quite bad, but it gets better. Everyday. So get over it.
My Favourite Meme
I started to spent some time reading about the Indish culture and econmoy, and figured out that they have a casts system there and that 2/3 of their people are suffering and starving and live in the poorest possible conditions while some of them are quite rich. They also have a strange sense of politics and a strange view of themselves being the only right humans on this globe (we could say national sozialism mentality) e.g. their religion is the best religion, their culture is the pure culture, their knowledge is the right knowledge, their busines is the best busines and so on. It's quite ignorant and disrespectful if it comes to other people, other mentality, respecting other humans on this globe - and yet the IT industry stuffs money up their butt.
It's quite possible that the information you've gathered from your cursory readings has helped you obtain a thorough understanding of Indian culture. As an Indian though, my viewpoint is very different.
The caste system that you addressed no longer exists. It is dead. I am not saying that its effects are no longer present in Indian society, but the caste system is *considered* to be a relic of the past.
I have no idea where the notion of Indians thinking they're "the only right humans on this globe" has come from. When you say we think our religion is the best religion, which one do you refer to: Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Christianity, etc? When you say we think our culture is the best culture, which one do you refer to? I believe India recognizes 18 languages, and seeing as how a unique language is often indicative of a unique culture, it would suffice to say that India is very diverse culturally. When you say we think our knowledge is the right knowledge, which one do you refer to? I have cousins majoring in medicine, english, economics, etc.
What I'm trying to say is that India is very diverse culturally and academically. Just because we mostly have the same skin color, it doesn't mean that we're all the same. With so much diversity it is impossible for any group to think that they are the "best."
Anyone who knows anything about India will realize that with the level of curruption there and rampant anarchy, any new technological developments will be quenched pretty soon. New technologies will not suit the currupt and they are the one's who usually have the power to decide what stays and what doesn't.
I would have agreed if this were the 90s.. but the indian government has grown a lot in terms of corruption and the sense of tech awareness. Right now in india, most of the population (except those who cant even afford food and clothing) carry a cell phone.. Pretty advanced ones in the urban areas and outdated, but usables in rural ares. Even the cab drivers that earn around $11 a day, carry one (as reported by one of my friends who recently visited mumbai aka bombay) The corruption still exist among lower level government employees, but people that are responsible of running the city and country as a whole are lot less corrupt then they used to be. Of course still a lot as compaired to developed countries, but changes dont happen overnight.
As a whole.. the country is developing pretty fast and its not too long before most of the outdated problems that still exist in that country are solved. I see India and China as countries that will probably rise up after the fall of the west (it is gonna happen.. It always happens. Read our history!)
Note: No, I am not an indian. I just like to keep a watch on whats going on.
Also, the bulk of people are against technology and change, as seen in the last elections. They want the old government which promotes anarchy and curruption. So, they will get what they want.
The only people who bitched about the new government are the opposition party and its supporters. If the overall population didnt want the new government, they wouldnt have voted for it. As for the technological development, no one is opposing it. At most, people who arent aware are on the fence and looking at how things are heading.
[ I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance ] -- Isaac Asimov
Wipro is working on GNOME, I see daily what they contribute and the stuff they contribute is either being ignored or not committed. It's better for us, better for the user and better for them.
As an indian engineer I agree. We also appriciate the europian fellows for thier professionalism and work ethics. we have all kind of people here. maybe you have to get the right sort of people( given the population advantage, you are certain to fond lots of them). though I agree the general indian mentality is to reap max benifits from one's efforts. so may be they need clear motivation. just make sure they see the motivation.
Believe me, the rail (and especially underground) networks in the UK are in an even worse state.
Get a fucking clue.. dickhead
Hey BUDDY, you're full of it.
I grew up in the US and lived in India for the last 10 years. Corruption is not as bad as it used to be, but it's still amazingly terrible.
A train ticket I had booked properly was suddenly deemed invalid when some "PA" and his crew decided they needed to get on the train too. The people running the trains laughed, obviously they were paid off quite well.
On my last trip there, I saw a *priest* spit inside a *temple*. I notified the "police"...they laughed.
I could go on and on, but corruption is bad, and you just want to close your eyes to it.
On my last trip there, I saw a *priest* spit inside a *temple*. I notified the "police"...they laughed.
How is this an example of corruption? Did somebody *bribe* the *priest* to spit, or was the *policeman* *bribed* to *laugh*? Or are you referring to corruption of the Soul, in which case my bad.
My Favourite Meme
See, with the same offending stuff we had to deal with. In your case I would simply shut the fuck up. There is an old saying that says:
"don't bite the hand that feeds you"
We in germany and the folks from usa were the ones who gave you money, who clothed your children, who paid your bills, who brought food on your tables and now you thank it that way. No matter what you think about us now, always remember that the clothes your kids wear are paid by our cheque. We could easily shut this situation down one day but this requires that the decision makers from germany and usa opens their eyes pretty damn fast.
Information technology has definitely simplified life for both the Rural and Urban Indian. Bhoomi is one of many projects that dot the landscape: The e-seva kendras in Hyderabad (electronic service centers where the power, water, telephone and other bills could be paid at one place), the spot billing of power consumption using hand held computers/palm tops, Simplified registration of sale of properties, registration of birth and death etc are some other noteworthy projects. Has the corruption reduced? Definitely, yes! Once the Government's system of maintenance of records is de-mystified and simplified, the avenues for corruption reduce. More importantly, the users can now invest the time and energy, which they were earlier investing on payment of bills etc, more productively. These initiatives may not be enough to make administration totally citizen-friendly but they are a good beginning. Though hardly 2% of Indians have Internet connections, a large percentage access cyber cafés. The cyber revolution is like the STD/ISD booths of yesterday. Fifteen years back, it was difficult to communicate on telephone from one mofussil town in India to the other but today, even the most interior villages have STD/ISD booths. Development is not restricted to only Information technology but also in other fields like Education, Health, Housing and Infrastructure. As India is vast, the extent of development is not the same everywhere. Parts of North India are at least five-six years behind the South and the West. But, considering that India got its independence (From 200 years of British rule) only in 1947, the advances that the Country made are praiseworthy and significant. No room for cynicism, here. The best is yet to be!
Those prior posters who are complaining about India's lack of political and economic transparency (as well as the same problem in many other poor countries) should read De Soto's book.
De Soto's goal is to help the poor - and the countries they reside in (including India) unlock dormant intellectual and financial capital.
Like it or not, India is growing up in ways that will make its poor more enabled - and able to leave poverty behind. Some of this will result in domestic displacement here. That's capitalism, especially when its operating in a way that lets people really *own* something of capital worth, and *leverage* that worth for further wealth.
Right now, India is learning to leverage intellectual capital, and making flegling attempts to improve the property system - there's no stopping this trend.
De Soto should win a Nobel prize for his work. His findings are astounding, and so compelling that every page seems a new insight into wire-ranging economic solutions that lie just under the surface.
What he describes in places like India is an arcane and complex system of underground economies that exist because there is no political/economic structure to permit ownership and transfer of capital. This is a seminal insight.
In fact, De Soto (who has done his research, exhaustively) shows that America went through the travails of a very non-transparent system of property ownership, and found its way out of it.
Bottom line: it's the ability of a culture to create transparent infrastructure that enables the ownership and transfer of capital that leads to development, and freedom ("freedom is participation in power" - Cicero (the Roman sage and philosopher).
Frankly, De Soto's book is one of the most enlightening things I've read on development, ever. It will help the reader understand what prerequisites are necessary to defeat poverty, and enable the poor.
As I write this, many governments worldwide have brought in De Soto (he's Peruvian) and his teams to help figure out new ways to structure capital ownership and capital transfer (leveraging).
This will all take time, and will make a huge difference to everyone - inlcuding Americans (in fact, De Soto presents the American experience as a template for how to begin approaching this problem in other places).
Read the book, and be enlightened.
Whoa there, have you ever seen the Simputer website? Here's a summary:- except for cute Indic marketing, there's in fact zero value that an Amida adds over, say, a Dell Axim, EVEN in terms of pricing.
I can probably see why you want to "defend" India against trolls (personally, growing immune to the crap these days), but let's use the *right* weapons here shall we? :-)
More than mere navel gazing.
It's safe to say that with rare exceptions (Japan, theOldEU) the world's rail networks are in horrendous shape. "Rail Network" is a gross overstatement here in the States.
The "Rush to India" as it were is not about nationalism, or hype. It's about money. India offers similiar services for less
The thing is, that's not quite true - it offers services that claim to be similar, but in reality, are not. Everyone is going to say that anecdotal evidence doesn't count, etc etc. That doesn't change the fact that most people who have worked on projects where Indian programmers have been involved have been burned by extremely bad code...
Let's not even get started on the call centers with support operators that few people understand...
you don't have any clue of what the third world is
More than mere navel gazing.
.... during the Code exchange boom, German programmers weren't in question - Indian programmers were.
Actually, Japan's rail network is worse than you think - There have been a fair number of times that JR trains have been canceled for "the wrong type of rain", which I had always thought was a BR exclusive.
And that's what's called a tautology. :-D
I don't know about the others, but I have (unfortunately) had first hand experience with Satyam people, and their "solutions" didn't actually solve anything.... (we ended up handing over all ERP and development stuff to a local company).
So I have a question here. What good is all of this technology they are getting if they don't know how to use it? India is a prime example of technology for technology's sake, without a hint of knowledge to go along with it.
Case and point. I work for large multinational corporation with offices in India, which also happens to own a large percentage of India's largest manufacturing company. I work in a relatively small office of about 100 hardware and software engineers developing niche hardware. Right after the recession dug its heels into the economy, our management decided it would be a good idea to offshore a lot of the work we were doing. We started importing (on L-1 visas, of course) dozens of Indians to be trained how to do our jobs. Here's what we found: Indians are very boastful of their capabilities and are very eager to prove themselves, but they don't know squat. They have a particular arrogance about them that is not only annoying, but completely unprofessional - even going so far as to telling us we're doing our jobs wrong, but then failing miserably when they try to do things their own way.
The rest of the world is shoving all of this technology down India's throat before they're ready, and as a result, they are going to end up being slaves in their own country to those countries that put that technology there. It's a technological coup, so to speak.
Indians have a lot to learn if they want to catch up to today in terms of technology. They need to pay particular attention to business and engineering practice and process if they're going ot have any hope of succeeding. They could also stand to learn some people skills.
Wipro is working on GNOME, I see daily what they contribute and the stuff they contribute is either being ignored or not committed. It's better for us, better for the user and better for them.
This says a lot about Indian outsourcing quality...
Btw, you really don't want to write off IR that easily. They are doing some cool stuff out there; an IR subsidiary has, for instance, developed a fascinating new mass transit solution for India's crowded urban landscapes. They also have a fairly active mailing list, and often respond to polite queries.
More than mere navel gazing.
You assume that many of these people want to learn to read (or at least, want to learn badly enough to put the time and energy into it to make it happen). If you tell an illiterate farmer "you need to learn how to read", I can easily imagine the reply being "I've gotten this far in life without learning to read, and I've got a family to feed, so buzz off". However, you tell that farmer "I've got a tool that'll help you double the price you get for your crop", and he'll figure out how to use it, if that means learning to read, or having his literate kid run it for him, or sending his illiterate kid to school to learn how.
Rob
outsourcing coupled with village going hitech coupled with a couple of missile tests ...India is on the road ! yes !
Chris ,
Php Programmers.
Btw, you really don't want to write off IR that easily. They are doing some cool stuff out there; an IR subsidiary has, for instance, developed a fascinating new mass transit solution for India's crowded urban landscapes. They also have a fairly active mailing list, and often respond to polite queries.
and a nice train running information site.
http://www.trainenquiry.com
Its IIS 6.0 + ASP.NET + Windows Server 2003
Also, to shake one's booty means to wiggle one's behind. Allow me to demonstrate...
ah ha ha, that's a gooed won? tell 'em robbIE? tell 'em what happens to all those idealisms when the monIE man comes to call?
fauxking ediots could be left to their owned felonious greed/fear/ego based glowbull warmongering, if it weren't so potentially fatal to all of the rest of us.
consult with/trust in yOUR creators... the genuine/open to ALL, community, since/until forever.
Correct-a-mundo!
What people dont realize is that technology and information is slowly, but surely making its inroads in to the poorest corners of India as long as there is someone who wants to learn.
Sure, corruption is rampant, but I blame the people for not waking up and realizing that they dont have to bribe them anymore. They dont realize the importance and the reach of media (or the media simply dont care) or they have not been educated. Wait a minute, corruption is not the achilles heel for India, education is. Millions of its citizens never went to school, especially in the rural northern states, noone ever taught them their basic rights, they were put down to indentured servitude from the day they were born. Education once it reaches india's masses will teach them and guide them towards liberty and respect towards their neighbours, towards other religions. Thats what we lack, and thats what is changing and we need more of that change.
We have a billion citizens to feed and limited resources. We have enjoyed freedom for only the last half a century, we are still a very young democratic nation. It is still to a large extent a secularist nation (especially the southern states which wont stand any nationalist/religious agendas),one that has been veritably peaceful to its neighbours.
Rapid Nirvana
they took 'r jobs!
Technology helps in catching criminals too -- the police loves cell phones -- the moment you catch one, his cell phone records lead you to others. The private citizen too can use hidden cameras and the like to fight corruption. On india-gii@cpsr.org, you will find plenty of people who have been often successfully been campaigning for better policy. The anonymous coward has most likely not been in touch with developments in regulatory reform over the last few years. Serious problems remain (particularly the manner in which spectrum is mismanaged), and people who aren't part of the solution are part of the problem. Arun
the rural Indian (who comprises about 70% of India's population), is slowly inching his way into the information age.
If that Indian's mass constitutes 70% of the population, he'll be inching his way very slowly.
Best BR excuse was 'wrong type of barometric pressure'.. *lol*
Swedish, but resident in the UK since 1996.
I have given up reading cooments in articles about India. When it is not an Indian zealot saying how great India is for all the things they are doing or are going to do, it is the guy who bashes India for some particular reason. Slashdot should slow down with these articles until the freaks cool down....
From Bhoomi FAQ
Who has designed the Bhoomi software?
The Bhoomi software has been fully designed in house by National Informatics Centre (NIC), Ministry of Information Technology, Government of India.
NIC is doing really good work on behalf of Govt. of India.
They are planning to develop (or help to develop) web sites with useful information for every district in India (Total no. districts = 601, Districts with websites = 399)
I think some kind of XML site feed exposing district related data (e.g : no. schools, hospitals) will help decision makers to understand patterns and take quick actions and plan better.
Let's send them the rest of our jobs.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
The rest of the third world is watching & waiting, and taking detailed notes... I dont see any need, any will, for this meaningless thing...
I think another thing that people forget about India is that the country is extremely culturally diverse with many ethnic groups and something like 114 languages and 216 dialects spoken in the country! (India recognizes officially 18 languages plus English for governmental use.)
As such, with this diversity, you're bound to have corruption and anarchy as each group jockeys for prominence over another.
Which does remind me: I wonder has anyone in India produced a home-grown version of Linux that supports the Western alphabet, Bengali script and Persian Arabic script simultaneously and seamlessly?
corruption and technology = completely incompatible. just look at the u.s.
The caste system that you addressed no longer exists. It is dead.
No its not. In a country where 45% people are officially illiterate (who knows the real number?), you expect that people have forgotten their traditions which are as old as the language they speak. So many people in the US are racists...despite having "education" and resources. Do you expect it to be better than that in India?
In the year 2000 alone an estimated 25,000 crimes against lower castes took place. This is only the tip of the iceberg as the police/Govt being under control of upper castes, ignores such crimes. It is estimated that 80+% of lower castes are illiterate.
Why dont you google for "caste crimes in India" and see what you find ? I'm sure most readers know about arranged marriages in India. If the caste system is dead, can anyone explain why more than 90% of people (even rich "educated" people) will marry their children among their own caste ? And why the minority who chooses their own partners face so much friction (an euphemism) ?
It seems there are two Indias. One India where people like the parent poster have leap frogged so ahead of the rest of the country, they think that the evils of caste have been eradicated simply because they don't see it as much among their peers.
And there are many such people.. maybe 300 million of them.. called the "middle class" and above. And these are the people a foreigner is likely to meet... further distorting everyones view.
Then there is another India..where things are quite different.. and simply saying that its problems are gone won't make them go away.
When you say we think our culture is the best culture, which one do you refer to?
You're kidding right ? Many Hindus will say his religion(localized version of Hinduism) is the best. Many Jain will say that too. In fact Jains and Buddhists being minorities, will be the most obnoxious about it. Ask me! My family is buddhist.
Then regionally... havent you heard how Bengalis think how cool they are ? How punjabis think they are stronger than all ? How marathis think nothings better than bombay ? How people in the south dislike northerners so much, they even refuse to speak hindi ?
Every sub-culture thinks they are the coolest. Which is true even in the US/Europe (but there is more friction in India).Sure not everyones like that, but most are.
Wasn't "e-choupal" the rude comment made by a silver protocol droid to C-3PO on Bespin?
:-)
No offense intended to my Indian friends, but it just sounds real familiar...
Its a little different in this case... Opposition party = guys who lost. Their supporters = Thugs they hired. Thats how it goes in india. They dont care about right wing or left wing, theres no concept like that as a matter of fact. People there support whatever government they elected and hardly any common man bitches about it unless the said government does a really bad job after they are elected.
[ I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance ] -- Isaac Asimov
I regret that my submission on Bhoomi was rejected in mid 2003. interested /. readers should go to the Bhoomi homepage and read about the project. It is truly fascinating and gigantic in scale.
http://www.revdept-01.kar.nic.in/
Techies should make note of the enormous change management, infrastructure and end user adoption issues that are highlighted (dont get turned off by NT, SQL and VB which is what has been used here)
SOME PROBLEMS FACED
1 Data entry agencies were not aware of land records Computerisation data entry screens. It was not one to one data entry process. The data entry involved data transformation which many a times was not done on paper by Village Accountants thus increasing our dependence on data entry operators to use their own knowledge for data entry process. Data entry agency representatives were therefore trained in Bangalore by the Bhoomi team. The meaning of different fields in land records document and their implications was explained to them.
In all divisional and district level workshops also, these agencies were called so that they could interact with Bhoomi team and have independent knowledge of data inputting.
2 Data entry agencies did not have sufficient infrastructure with them. They had old computers, most of the time, 80486 based machines which could either not run Windows or if it could, its processing speed was very slow. They did not have enough printers and UPS either.
It seems there are two Indias. One India where people like the parent poster have leap frogged so ahead of the rest of the country, they think that the evils of caste have been eradicated simply because they don't see it as much among their peers.
Simply the fact there are quite a few people who can say this proves that the Caste System is a dead issue, definitely in the urban areas.
As to the second part of your reply, that is what the garnd-parent is saying. Which one of our cultures are the best. Each one of us obviously thinks our own culture is the best. DUH!
My Favourite Meme
How is it that they have "The Bomb" and now computer access but still no indoor plumbing in much of the country?
Yes, India is definitely a third world country.
Slavery is bad economics. When you buy a slave, you're encouraged to treat it as least as good as you treat your horse. When you employ one of 250 million desperate people, you can work him to death and just move on the the next one when he wears out. Food, healthcare, supplies? The poor only get just enough to survive, and the rich don't pay anymore than they have to.
This isn't flamebait, it's pessimism over the future of mankind. For nearly all of human history, the bulk of societies wealth has been devoted to a lucky few. It still is, there's just so much now we poor slaves (in certain parts of the world anyway) don't notice. The trouble is, there isn't enough material wealth for the rich to live like kings and the poor to be OK. I mean that. Studies have shown there isn't enough metal on planet Earth for China alone to industrialize the way America has. Plus, we're gonna run out of oil soon, and the oil companies are doing everything in their power to make sure there are no viable alternatives when that happens (if you think they live like kings now, wait till the supply diminishes, they'll live like Gods).
If you look at human history, and all the times the poor and downtrodden made progress against their social betters, it's always been because a large amount of them just died off and they had to be treated nice until their numbers swelled again. But those damn dumb poor people never learn, and after a generation or two, there's plenty of 'em to abuse again. Still, I think we're heading for a major population crash. But with modern information technology and an understanding of history there's absolutely no reason for it. We could put a stop to it just by forcibly controlling our population (as much for social reasons as for economic). But we're far too stupid to do that. Besides, the rich would never allow it. It'd mean the end to their currently limitless supply of expendable labor, and their status as kings.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
"THE gleaming Indian headquarters of Hewlett-Packard"
I have to take issue with this comment, I've been in Bangalore for several months and have yet to see any "gleaming" buildings...or anything else for that matter. There are a couple of buildings that are kind of shiny, but most are pretty dingy...
Which part of "90% of people will marry in their own caste" do you not understand ? This goes for even rich and/or educated people and urban areas.
I will go so far as to say that its very likely that you or your sibling will marry in your own caste.
For the second part what I meant is that its OK to brag about your culture if it has acheived something... but not if it has acheived very little yet and there is still a long way yo go as it is for India.
You know they cannot be original enough to come up with this stuff on their own.
Enquiring minds want to know!
Also, the bulk of people are against technology and change
I don't blame them, if you're already referring to many people as "bulk". Fuck man.
ALL countries believe their way is the right/best way, be it EU, US, UK, Australia, China, India or even Iraq. It's not nationalist socialist; it's simply patroitism. It's just a different form of the "We're #1" tagline.
I disagree. I don't think any country has got it right yet, including my own (Canada). Still, it's a hell of a lot better than some countries.
one that has been veritably peaceful to its neighbours.
;-)
Like when Indira Ghandi sent the troops into what was then E Pakistan?
Actually, I thought then and am still convinced now that it was the best thing she could have done. Bangladesh may be a poor and overpopulated strip of land but giving it independence from (W) Pakistan was a wonderful act.
Now, who is really proud of their Gmail address
A BBC REPORT :The internet is beginning to have a revolutionary effect on the 700 million people who live in villages in India - and the charge is being led by women.
A project set up by one of India's leading technology institutes has put women in charge of forging the way across the digital divide as the proprietors of a fast-growing number of internet cafes or kiosks around the sub-continent.
In total 80% of these new kiosks are run by women, many of whom have had very little or no acquaintance with technology before.
Asha Sanjay, of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Madras that established the scheme, says that while in some places people are not able to get a bus to the next village, the net allows them to connect to the world.
"Here they can do it at the click of a button," she told BBC World Service's Everywoman programme.
"It's really something."