The Indian Info-Rickshaws

DoomDoom writes "CNN is running a story on how the Indian government is delivering health and educational services on a WiFi equipped rickshaw to the poorest of its citizens. It's a poetical union of a typical third world product with high-tech! Do you still think computing is unnecssary for the poorest of the poor?"

Comments

Hard Life

[kmmatthews]

From TFA:
"By using computers, I can improve my knowledge," Sharma, whose parents plan to pull her out of school at 15

Ouch. I complain that I only was able to go to a technical school [putting myself through college now]; at least I got to finish out high school.

It amazes me everytime I read about how hard so many people have it, then I look around and see these hideously overweight people driving SUVs, tossing out food, with a ridiculous sense of entitlement (e.g. "society owes me because I'm special") to that effect.

I wonder if more of us in America will ever wake up and realize how good we have it? Yes, of course, the wealth/technology/etc we have introduces its own set of problems, (e.g. SCO, Microsoft, obeisty, ...) but I'd rather deal with that anyday than lack of education or starvation.

Re:Hard Life

[melkorainur]

> The also get paid less than the UK minimum wage. Very unfair. May I ask why that is unfair? After all, if the pay rate for the Delhi call center workers was set to be the UK minimum wage, then I can't understand why the call center woudn't just be located within the UK? As for your remark about "exploiting". Well, at the end of the day, India has to do what's best for itself. It's not like the US flew in B21 bombers and forced India to be it's call center and software production house. Nor are the lower prices/costs forced onto the Indian businesses. "Left alone to develop"? Wasn't that India's policy in the 1960s? I don't think that led to any major successes? Let's see: 1. Defeated by China. 2. Decrease in effective per capita income by over 300%. The list keeps going. The simple answer is that India will progress as much as it's citizens want too. A rickshaw with a wifi enabled computer on it can inspire it's rural populace to want more out of life. That's a good thing! The fact is that even a callcenter, at a tenth the wage of western countries, can provide these folk with an opportunity for betterment. So why fight that or complain about it. If you'd like to improve it, start a business and provide quality jobs to these folk.

Perfect for unemployed techworkers ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I could use a few ex-dotcommers to pull my rickshaw around. They'd be getting a pittence, I'd get transportation and it's clean for the environment. Win Win situation ... who wants to sign up?!

cost

[t_allardyce]

What always amazes me is how governments in other countries manage to get IT projects finished with tiny budgets. Here in the UK or in the US the rickshaws would have cost 100s of thousands each and a small fortune to run. Look at eVoting for example - i've heard prices of $10000 per machine! WTF costs $10000 to stick an unsecure crappy computer in a box and put some strung together voting software on it? India they do it with some custom build hardware and it costs nothing!