Known as International Labour Day, 1 May is a day of celebration of the working class. On the occasion of this day of celebration, for the past few years, I had been receiving invitations from an organization called the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan to attend a workers’ community gathering in Bhim, a village in Rajasthan.…
Sunita Bhandari, a resident of Pipleth village in Chamba block of Tehri Garhwal district, Uttarakhand, completed a computer literacy course at the local Soochna Seva Kendra amid a lot of struggle. Her husband had passed away, she had two school-going children and a heavy financial burden. She says, “I missed most of my classes due…
Paanchicholi village is based in Nilanga block of Latur district in Maharashtra. The population of this village is around 5,000, and most of them are engaged in agriculture as their only source of income. A farmer from this village committed suicide on January 6, 2016. He was 38 years old, and his name was Tukaram…
Over 10,000 women got together in a little quiet village called Sukhtawa in Hoshangabad district of Madhya Pradesh last month. These women had gathered from gathered from different regions of the district and state, and were representing various SHGs. The agenda of the event was to discuss the improvement in the conditions of women and…
The Egyptians were the first to use non-standard hieroglyphs to communicate information in 1900 BCE. Encryption has come a long way since the days of simple substitution ciphers and has found its way into our daily life. Paraphrasing John Oliver from Last Week Tonight, “Encryption helps protect some of our most important information like financial…
Mahesh Venkateswaran, Principal, Innovation & Engagement NSDC Access to information and mobility continue to play a very critical role in both our professional and personal lives. Traditionally and even today, we continue to place tremendous emphasis on education and certificates. Apart from the societal status, education also provides upward mobility. Educated people continue to have…
On May 1, when the world was celebrating International Labour Day, Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF) was a part of the celebration in Bheem in the Rajsamand district of Rajasthan. On the occasion, DEF’s founder Osama Manzar received an invitation from an organisation called Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) to attend a gathering of workers in…
Here’s a scenario if the Geospatial Information Regulation Bill, 2016, becomes an Act: I have to ask my friend to pick me up from an exact location in the city, and I decide to send my friend my location through WhatsApp (or any other messaging aoo) using Maps.
Vijay Roy, who lives with the Sahariya tribe in Baran district of Rajasthan, was trained in 2008 to establish wireless networks through the Wireless for Communities (W4C) project run by the Digital Empowerment Foundation. Today, the 28-year-old young man looks after seven Community Information Resource Centres (CIRCs)
Weavers in Musiri hail from low-income families and mostly weave sarees or dhoti. Almost every weaving household, barring three, weave on handloom. Like most weaving clusters, here too, the occupation is a family tradition where the art of weaving has been passed down the generations. In fact, children start weaving as early as at the…
