Community radio can be rural ISP
All community radios are capable of running a wireless broadband Internet community network without the need of any licences
ICT in schools still a distant dream
India has the third highest number of Interet users but 80-85% of the country is still not connected to the World Wide Web Into the second decade of the 21st century, it is commonplace to speak of the information economy and the world being a connected globe.
Building another pipe dream?
Even though there has been progress on laying cables, there is a serious lack of planning and strategy to make sure that these are fully functional and available to the people, organisations and government offices. The difference between cities and villages in India has always been stark. Services that people in urban areas take for…
The wide gap between social issues and social media
Three-and-a-half months after the launch of the Digital India initiative, there is a feeling of directionlessness in many sections of the government, companies and the community of activists about how to implement the ambitious programme and make the best of it. In the last 100 days or so, I have met at least 100 people…
Pratibadh: empowering and informing its rural readers
Pratibadh, a 13-year-old publication distributed in 53 districts across Bihar, Punjab and Haryana, is bringing about an information revolution in villages. From humble beginnings in 1996 with just 1,000 copies, the fortnightly is now read in Hindi or Gurmukhi by not less than 800,000 people in 35,000 villages. But the reason it got a Manthan…
Citizen Matters: A local news outlet for Bengaluru
It was the years 2005-07, when Bengaluru was witnessing a spurt in urban growth and the city’s infrastructure was crumbling that Meera K. realized that the local pages of mainstream newspapers were not providing the answers on why things were in such a mess. In an office on the outskirts of Koramangala, Meera, one of…
Technology and Public Libraries
Libraries are the life blood of a nation. This is particularly true for a country such as India, which has a large number of young people aspiring for a better life. Yet, our public libraries are grossly neglected. Each one of the country’s 676 districts has at least one public library, an enormous resource that…
Digital opportunity can overcome credibility challenge of NGOs
NGOs are expected to be visible, authentic, genuine, transparent, capable of skill and scale and, most importantly, adapting to a new communication medium, which is digital
Zuckerberg, Facebook, Internet.org and Indian villages
Facebook is working towards making many of the visions of Mark and objectives of Internet.org into a reality
Digital infrastructure in panchayat villages
Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojana needs digital backbone and redesigning of MPLAD fund