Smart villages before smart cities
Is it really smart to create smart cities? Or should we reverse our thinking to concentrate on making smart villages?
Ideas that CSR can fund
The most important investment in a social enterprise is intangible. It includes passion and round-the-clock investment of time. The intangible investments make a strong bond between the entrepreneur, the community and the issue she is trying to solve. Ironically, there is no investment…
CSR as a seed fund for social enterprises
Would it not be great if a corporate social responsibility (CSR) fund becomes a seed or social fund for investment in a cluster of a dying art or a traditional skill and transforms it into a success story? Or, how about a CSR fund that transforms an entire village into one where all households are digitally literate?
Crowdsourcing is Gandhian
I am not an economist nor have I studied business. But my common sense says crowdsourcing is not only humane but also Gandhian. Last Friday, I came out of a meeting in Shastri Bhawan (a building where officials of several ministries sit) in New Delhi and opened the Ola mobile app to find a cab nearby.
Using RTI in the battle for RTE
This article was first published in the Mint newspaper on October 19, 2015. What is happening in Rajasthan for the past four months must be replicated across India. After all, education is the most neglected area in India, and the situation in government schools remains pathetic, with no sign of any improvement in the future.…
Facebook is not the Internet
This article was first published in the Mint newspaper on October 14, 2015. How come access to Internet.org through a limited network service is access to the entire Internet? In 2009, I joined Facebook after my friend Asif Syed, editor of online news magazine Current.in convinced me of its possibilities for people like me who…
Hate in the time of social media
This article was first published in the Mint newspaper on October 5, 2015. There is something wrong with our society. It seems that we are driven more by emotions, non-issues, violence and calls for destruction than reasoning, common sense, non-violence and trust. We are choosing politicians who are dividing us; we are allowing the administration…
Digital tools vs analogue mind
It may be a good idea for the government to think of investing in a manner that ensures that the existing system works and, to make them work, use all possible digital tools
From publishing for the masses to publishing by the masses
With the arrival of digital tools, people have been freed of the shackles of illiteracy
Voices of the unconnected
The world has come a long way since 1995, when the Internet was introduced in India, and since 2003, when the UN General Assembly held the first of the two World Summits on the Information Society (popularly known as WSIS) in Geneva.The second WSIS was held in Tunis in 2005. The call of the WSIS was pretty simple: to work towards making an information society where every person is part of the connected world,…