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 .
Your experience is a little dated - now you can just log on to a website like http://irctc.co.in/ [irctc] and book tickets. Its couriered to you in a day. I guess the next step is to allow you to print your own tickets but this is extremely handy too.
Watch Out!!
You know, farmers in countries such as the U.S. make heavy use of computers and the Internet to monitor weather, plan crop cycles, check on the markets, etc. By giving these rural Indian farmers access to that kind of information, the intent is to help them do better business, become better off, and allow the rest to follow. It is much like planting a seed, isn't it?
THE NERD IS THE COMPUTER.
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.
This is absolutely not a troll, its a perfectly serious question.
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!
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 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.
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!