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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 .
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!
I know that you were joking, but I am going to respond to the quote. The rest of the third world is not waiting and taking notes. Asia has many meetings between the coutnries' respective organizations similar to NECTEC to has out a unified Asian strategy on things like open source software.
Thailand (which I know more about than the other countries), has had government supported open source for many years, including creating SIS (a Linux distro for use as an internet gateway in schools) and the necessary free internet access for the schools using it. They are on version 4.X now, and the program is at least six years old.
The Thai gov't also supports low cost computing initiatives from the Ministry of ICT, with full computers running about 11,000 Baht (~US$270), easily financed through the government bank with little hassle.
To say that other nations are resting on their butts and watching India is a little insulting, don't you think?
Put identity in the browser.
It's not about ruggedized Linux-flavoured PDAs. The idea of these projects *is* to employ and educate them. I graduated with a Computer Science degree last year from BITS, Pilani, one of India's best engineering colleges. In my final year alone, we had at least 4-5 experts from various companies/NGOs (including e-Choupal, Hewlett-Packard) speak to us about how technology can help the rural population.
You're right if you think that the people would much rather have fair prices for crops and improved agricultural yields than broadband Internet connections. The point is that these initiatives provide exactly what they want. The most successful projects have typically been those that are implemented by NGOs working at the grassroots level, that arise from a genuine understanding of what farmers need. Ideas like providing high-speed internet access to schools which don't have textbooks and teachers are obviously doomed to failure.
In large parts of the country, poor farmers are exploited by middlemen who buy their produce at low prices and resell them with a huge mark-up. The farmers often had no option but to trust these middlemen, who lie to them about market rates. The e-Choupal system allows them to find out the going rates at markets nearby and can put them in touch with prospective buyers. Eliminating the middleman and his commission can sometimes double or triple the farmer's profit.
Again, a farmer with crop trouble (perhaps an unusual pest) had to go a government official for help. By the time the experts decided what could be done and communicated with the official (who would take his own time coming back to the farmer), weeks often elapsed. Now, the farmers fire off an email to the nearest agricultural university, and get a reply the same day with the e-Choupal system.
Considering that most of these poor farmers are illiterate (or the next thing to it), making these systems usable has taken remarkable ingenuity on the part of the engineers designing them. It takes intuitive user-interfaces to a whole new level!
In English it is, but judging by what he wrote, he's German, and in German the term for people who live in India is 'Indisch'.
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....
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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.
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!
There are two companies that are working on it. I visited one of these guys a year ago and saw the product. It was cool but wasn't available out in the market. Finally, about 6 months ago, they were out with thier offering. It's priced at about INR 10K or USD 220
I have also noticed this among these /. threads. What they think internally and what they speak about others is entirely different.
Check this out Let's do a Bangalore: John Kerry from one of your president hope full. Can talk without verifying the facts.