Governance through citizen participation @ social media
In the last couple of years, various social media initiatives, like using Facebook, have come up where govt agencies have shown proactive interest to engage with citizens
Need for robust information infra
Big plans to serve the people in backward districts are impeded due to lack of a medium to reach them there
Undoing of IT labs in schools
There is a lot of discussion on the shortage of teachers in our schools. While India is trying to find a way to fill the vacant positions of teachers and perhaps also find out how many of the 7.7 million school teachers actually go to teach, I wanted to share with you the preparedness level…
Undoing of IT labs in schools
Task is clearly cut out for HRD ministry and IT department: set target and have all 1.5 million schools connected via Internet and provide 7.7 million teachers 3G-enabled tablets
Towards Digital India: One positive step at a time
The prime minister recently announced the exciting Digital India programme (DIP). However, there are three things: one, there is nothing new except that it is repackaged into one brand name; secondly, it should have been called “Digital Bharat” rather than Digital India; thirdly, we at Digital Empowerment Foundation felt elated that two of its three…
Govt schemes must reach people
There is a big gap between government capacity enablement and digital empowerment of masses
Where mobile breaks barriers
At the heart of India encompassing five states lies the vast expanse of Gondwana, where three million people speaking Gondi live, cut off from the world of newspapers, magazines, televisions and the digital media. Activists dispute the 2011 census figure of three million, and claim at least 10 million speak Gondi. Gondi is primarily spoken…
Bringing Internet to villages
It will be exciting to adopt the Guifi.net model for India, where many live in remote and inaccessible areas When Oracle engineer Ramon Roca returned from the US a decade back to settle down at Gurb, a village 75km away from Spain’s capital Barcelona, he found the countryside had no Internet access. Roca could work…
The unequal world of the Internet
Connecting, informing and empowering, the Internet holds the promise to be the Great Leveller of our times. However, the way it is evolving around us, it seems poised to become a tool of digital exclusion, creating a world of great disproportion. Limiting access to non-English users, we may be unknowingly creating a virtual world mirroring…
The connected world of Jhamtse Gatsal
Lumla is a small village in Tawang district of Arunachal Pradesh, bordering Bhutan and Tibet. It takes about an hour to reach Lumla from Tawang, the district headquarter. Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) is the only wireless service provider in Lumla. There’s no data connectivity unless you install a satellite (VSAT) dish. In Tawang town,…