Sua Devi Kalbeliya and Khatu Kalbeliya are folk dancers who have travelled all over the world. They are not educated and almost illiterate. If you look at their passports with multiple copies, you will see they have been abroad more than 90 times to several countries to perform, teach and conduct workshops on folk dancing.…
The Karbi Anglong district in Assam was created in 1976 to protect tribal communities. It is the largest district in Assam and perhaps in the entire north-east region. Inhabited by ethnic groups such as Karbis, Bodos, Kukis and Dimasas, Karbi Anglong faced an insurgency and is one of the country’s 250 most backward districts. In…
The Indian electorate would always be thankful to its democracy and its parliamentarians that they passed the Right to Information (RTI) law so that citizens are able to know everything that the government does. For RTI to be proactive and not reactive, it is important that information is produced on a medium that can be…
There are 28 state-level libraries in India with 80% coverage. In the districts, the coverage is 76% with 461 libraries. But in the talukas and villages, the coverage drops drastically to 12.5% (501 libraries) and 4.9% (28,820 libraries), respectively. Most of these government libraries are ailing and are either dysfunctional or on the verge of…
While Internet users have increased, the not-so-healthy reactions from the govt have also risen In the past few years, although India has been ranked among the top three nations by number of Internet users and second only to the US in Facebook users, there has also been an increasing number of not-so-healthy reactions from the…
Impact sourcing should be less based on employment generation and more about using naturally existing resources to create impact on the local economy. But what is impact sourcing? Out of 42 million population of Kenya, 25 million carry mobile phones and 12 million of them use it to access the Internet. Kenya is also known…
Newsweek recently announced it will publish its last print edition on 31 December. The weekly magazine attributed its decision to the fact that two out of five Americans read and consume information on their mobile devices. Is that a sign? Not more than 1% of India’s population is truly habituated to depend fully on digital…
There is only one way India can become a leading country in the 21st century global economy—by ensuring unhindered deployment of its right to information (RTI) law and universally enabling it with the Internet. On 12 October, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made a critical remark in this regard. “There are concerns about frivolous and vexatious…
I have coined a new job role—agent of the Internet and information—and the inspiration for this is the unusual story of two Indians who are spearheading the use of the Internet for empowerment. One is a 27-year-old former electrician and the other is a 67-year-old womansarpanch, the head of a village council. Both are dedicated…
I often use the phrase “bottom of the pyramid” to refer to that part of the untapped markets of the world that has people living on less than $2 a day. And I have realized that in India, home to 345 million poor people, you cannot be a sustainable consumer unless you are a producer. I…