Networking Technology At Work In Rural India 179
abhikhurana writes "Whenever a news item about a plan to offer aid to a poor community in a developing country to set up an Internet backbone or any similar story is posted on Slashdot, there is always a debate among the readers if there is any point in spending so much money on such activities when people in such communities don't have basic amenities like clean drinking water. So when I came acorss this story,
I decided to post it to slashdot. It's about new software developed by Indian Institute of
Technology, Chennai, which allows video conferencing on low-bandwidth connections, and the impact this technology is having
on the small rural communities where it has been deployed."
shouldn't be using ichat for surgery (Score:5, Funny)
Doctor on other side of the world..."Hey, iChat a/v went down again, what the hell does 'beta' mean anyway??"
You don't get it... this just means... (Score:2, Insightful)
that we are TOTALLY screwed... if they got ppl coming up with new technologies that WORK over in India... it means corpers and domestics need even LESS of us here in the US... obviously us americans didn't come up with it... which means what? That that's another set of IT jobs that leaves the US to go to those guys. (or at least contracts that we could've had) Face it, we're not falling behind but we're not exactly price competitive these days either.
Granted we don't know how well they work a
Re:You don't get it... this just means... (Score:2)
Re:You don't get it... this just means... (Score:3, Informative)
To old timers among you, I ask this... have you made any breakthroughs lately? If not, I doubt tenure will keep you around these days. Unless you're a teacher. Tenure nowadays just means a higher pay job to eliminate and a bigger bonus to get for some CEO somewhere.
Well, I can't speak for the original AC poster, and your's was certainly was an "angry rant", but what made you suppose that the AC was an "old timer"? First, tenure only applies to academic teaching positions, which is a tiny portion of IT-r
videoconferencing? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:videoconferencing? (Score:3, Funny)
That would be e-water.
Just hook up the device to a well, and you can pump it remotely. Needs its own IP address though, so it better be IPv6 so we don't run out....
Re:videoconferencing? (Score:2, Interesting)
If one bothers to read the entire article, it states that videoconferencing can save the people the expense of going to other towns to see a doctor.
Speaking of "affording water"... it is often misquoted/misunderstood phenomenon. There is plenty of water available. The issue is about storage/harnessing the ground/surface water in a cost-effective manner.
Re:videoconferencing? (Score:1)
Re:videoconferencing? (Score:2)
If the network can help you dig a well, it's worth the value of the water already. What can be afforded at a constant price changes with the value of the good/service.
Re:videoconferencing? (Score:2, Insightful)
What I mean is
High Technology and Backward Cultures Don't Mix (Score:3, Interesting)
Backward, possibly even barbaric, societies are character
Re:High Technology and Backward Cultures Don't Mix (Score:2)
Re:High Technology and Backward Cultures Don't Mix (Score:3, Insightful)
> more important things like improving their culture?
> First, introduce modern culture and modern notions of morality;
Aren't we the self-declared pundits on barbarism and modernism. If you mean not having an MTV culture, not wiping out the indegenous people but co-existing with them, not having hate groups like KKK (don't winch) mean India has a barbaric culture, then you must be right. Unlike some countries, civilization in India has been around
Please mod this up!!!!!!! (Score:2)
Re:High Technology and Backward Cultures Don't Mix (Score:1)
WTF? Who needs the KKK when members of the 2 largest religious groups in the country are happy to alternately bar-b-q people on trains or butcher them in the villages in which they live.
During a few weeks of (relatively recent) violence they racked up an impressive death toll. Not a hate group in sight though so this must be love.
I do agree with some of the point you made but the first part is crap.
UltraSound: Indian Method for Discarding Females (Score:2)
Your conclusions are baseless (Score:1)
Re:Your conclusions are baseless (Score:2)
Latvia has a ratio of 119:100, so should we assume that in Latvia, they practice infanticide and targeted abortions against male babies?
Given its position and history, I think we can assume a good deal of the male population in Latvia was lost during *political discussions* with Russia. The fact that parents in some countries practice infanticide is hardly news.
Re:High Technology and Backward Cultures Don't Mix (Score:2)
Adam_Trask already handled most of your points in another reply, but he ignored this one and I would like to respond to it. Your research regarding the treatment of women in various Asian and Middle-Eastern nations is admirable
Stanislaw Lem... (Score:5, Interesting)
So true... Often modern technology is simply cheaper than the "simple" stuff. Think cellular phones in areas without standard phone networks...
BR and Infra (Score:5, Insightful)
I suspect Lem was being satrical. But it's not news that countries with no infrastructure often leapfrog more developed nations. I'm told that Indonesia never built an earth-based telephone infrastructure, because by the time they could afford to do it, it was cheaper to get their own comsats. And we've all seen the way the Third World has embraced cell phones and text messaging.
Re:BR and Infra (Score:2)
So what's up with that? Turns out that the traditional telephone company model that worked so well for 50 years is now crap. A single state-owned telco simply can't keep up any more. Most African countries kept the state telcos as monopolie
No Government is Good Government! (Score:3, Insightful)
"TOTAL DISASTER" is actually an understatement. Somalia doesn't even have a government, and Congo is World War III, only without the good parts.
You often hear the economic and social libertarians saying, "Government is the problem, not the solution. If you want you want more goods a
NO, WE CAN'T. (Score:1)
Lem was VERY satirical in it and calling that imaginary country he described "banana republic" is about the mildest thing that can be done
Just to mention crocodiles being an important part of official divorce and government changes at least twice a month
Re:NO, WE CAN'T. (Score:2)
Re:BR and Infra (Score:2)
Re:Stanislaw Lem... (Score:4, Interesting)
So true... Often modern technology is simply cheaper than the "simple" stuff. Think cellular phones in areas without standard phone networks...
Sometimes it has to do with cost. A friend of mine was in a rural part of Ecuador years ago when a US (I believe) phone company was contracted to lay a phone network. He told me that one day the workers would be there laying the cables, and they next day the cables were dug up and gone. Aparently the impoverished residents thought they could get some money for the copper in the wires, so they would "harvest" the cables. This supposedly prompted a more widespread deployment of cellular service.
Re:Stanislaw Lem... (Score:3, Informative)
This happens in the United States also. Basically crackheads will do just about anything for their next hit. One of the things they have been known to do is to use tree pruners or climb telephone poles in order to cut down telephone lines for copper. I
Re:Stanislaw Lem... (Score:1)
Re:Stanislaw Lem... (Score:1)
Re:Stanislaw Lem... (Score:1)
Re:Stanislaw Lem... (Score:2)
It makes you wonder though, what kind of twisted mind goes straight for 3000 V power lines? There have got to be easier ways to
Re:Stanislaw Lem... (Score:1)
Re:Stanislaw Lem... (Score:2)
Re:Stanislaw Lem... (Score:2)
The satellite link was originally only for use by the organization that operates it, but they now provide service to other mission organizations, since it's almost impossible to get new phone lines from the government telco. Of course, the government owned telephone company sees that as competition, eve
copper=money (Score:2)
South Africa is running a lot of fibre now because, unlike copper, it has no resale value.
simon
Re:Stanislaw Lem... (Score:1)
I suspect Lem was being satrical...
Better than food is... (Score:3, Interesting)
Really, how many teachers are motivated to help the unfortunate, but not so motivated as to live in a poor village?
Re:Better than food is... (Score:2)
Re:Better than food is... (Score:2)
If it's not pandemic, why are these ppl uneducated in the first place?
Re:Better than food is... (Score:1)
I'm indian and one of "these people" and i have three degrees (one a Masters in Computer Science, two in Electronics Engineering from Indian universities.).
India has one of the largest number of "highly skilled" to "very highly skilled" workers today. The university where i did my engineering degree had nineteen affiliated engineering colleges under it that followed the same syllabus. (that number has risen since then). And that was just for Electro
Re:Better than food is... (Score:1)
Also, I suspect you are in the U.S. sucking off the teat of those who you mock.
Your country has a billion people, 56% unemployment rate and a 52% literacy rate. It is nothing to brag about. If it was, you would still be living there.
Re:Better than food is... (Score:2)
Re:Better than food is... (Score:2)
Re:Better than food is... (Score:2)
They're up in arms about the competition from cheap highly skilled programmers and electrical engineers.
Video conferencing? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why do the people of rural India need videoconferencing?
It woul be much more suitable for scientific outposts in remote places in the world where the people can utilize the conferencing technology along with other data compression schemes to increase their "connectivity".
Re:Video conferencing? (Score:1, Offtopic)
Hell, I live in San Diego, California and I don't need video conferencing. And more to the point I don't want it either.
RTFA (Score:1)
Quote the article in case of Slashdotting/laziness:
IIT, Oops bring the world to village kids
Shobha Warrier in Chennai | August 01, 2003
Half-a-dozen kids sit huddled in front of a personal computer concentrating hard to grasp everything that the face on the monitor is saying.
The tiny kiosk, where these kids are sitting, doe
Re:Video conferencing? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Video conferencing? (Score:1)
RTFA? (Score:5, Informative)
Since you're probably long gone I'll summarize for you:
0. In rural India, it's often really hard to get to places due to very poor roads, that get washed out in the rain, and the population is very broadly distributed on farms.
1. A teacher in the city can educate children in a rural area. (viz., telecommuting)
2. Doctors can run virtual clinics for villagers to give them medical advice.
3. Scientists can have meetings with local farmers to give them crop advice.
All of these things are IN DEMAND by the people who had a chance to try them out.
simon
Idiotic... (Score:1)
Re:Idiotic... (Score:2)
Re:Video conferencing? (Score:2)
Why do the people of rural India need videoconferencing?
So we can finally outsource management? Can the head of a indian village do any worse than the head of Enron.
Sounds like the potential for a reality TV show... NAAA!!!
Re:Video conferencing? (Score:3, Insightful)
Video-conferencing for education, which is what's really mentioned in the article, has taken off in a big way in this part of the world. MIT offers webcast lectures [mit.edu] to graduate students in Singapore, just as Eidenhoven [nus.edu.sg], Georgia Tech [nus.edu.sg] and others do. Carnegie Mellon [msitprogram.net] also has a similar programme in India.
The Indian President, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, was a tenured lecturer at the Anna University before getting elected as a President; I remember reading somewhere that he still gives lectures to students in Madras th
Oops I See + Wifi (Score:4, Insightful)
You could also have one attending physician in charge of many physician assitants in many small towns, instead of just using it for teaching.
That's great and all (Score:3, Insightful)
However, I could see this useful for a doctor who may be visiting a rural community to see a patient. Say this patient has a disease he has never seen before, the doctor could talk to doctors in other cities to get their opinions and even said back pictures of the patient, allowing for a correct and accurate diagnosis of the patient.
the video conference can assist infrastructure (Score:2)
This way the experts in town can be shared around the countryside without having to waste hours travelling.
Being from a very spread out country myself, where it can take hours to get between two towns and days to g
is that like military intelligence? (Score:2)
Never mind the boss, so long as the customer is happy. I suppose those who provide ikea like assembly instructions wouldn't follow up with decent phone or video conference support either. But those of us who do provide useful help will have more customers available without having to travel. If only I could speak Hindi.
Re:That's great and all (Score:2)
Like say people wanting to communicate about water supply, hospitals, electricity and sanitation?
Yeah makes you think, huh?
Re:That's great and all (Score:1)
Most of them do have drinking water etc. It is just that the living standard is sub-optimal. Medical care is lacking, and bad crops mean hunger.
Hell, a lot of parts of the US of A are considered third world country by others, but that does not mean that they haven't got running water or anything...
Warper
Re:That's great and all (Score:2)
Things like clean drinking water is something I take for granted here but I realize if I went to Mexico, I would have to worry about my hea
Decided? (Score:2, Funny)
Funny how you just up and "decided to post it." Have you discovered some secret way to bypass the editors? If so, please share.
Re:Decided? (Score:2)
1. Find old story from a week ago on Slashdot
2. Change the wording and submit
3. Wait for CmdrTaco to approve it
4.....
5. Profit!
Re:Decided? (Score:2)
Re:Decided? (Score:1)
If you want to try it out... (Score:3, Informative)
How sad is this? (Score:2, Insightful)
I wish I could be less of a cynic. This certainly seems like a good idea, but people used to think television would save the world too, by making it possible to educate the masses about critical political or social things.
I can easily envision this technology getting used for entertainment. "No drinking water? No
Cynicism is so convenient (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with introducing technology into the underdeveloped countries is not the technology itself, but the way it's applied. Typically, it comes from some industrial-world aid agency that simply doesn't understand local conditions. They'll invent complicated systems that attempt to duplicate features of Western infrastructre, without considering prerequisites that a less developed country doesn't have.
Some years back, there was a big push to build factories in Africa to process Sunflower seeds into oil. This would have connected a resource (lots of African farmers grow sunflowers) with an unmet need (lots of Africans needs to consume more vegetable fat). All the money was essentially wasted: the factories couldn't sustain themselves without huge subsidies. It cost too much to transport the seeds to the factories and the oil to the consumers, especially in areas with bad roads, corrupt local officials, etc.
A better solution came from an inventor in Vermont: a cheap sunflower seed press [africare.org]. Sell them to farmers so they can process the seeds themselves, and sell the oil to their neighbors. The whole process is economically self-sustaining: farmers pay for the presses with profits from their oil, and profits from the presses pay for more presses. The only problem they had starting up was getting a grant to develop the press. It seems that nobody was prepared to fund a development effort that only ran to $30,000...
The bottom line is that technology can solve third-world problems. It just has to be the right technology.
Re:Cynicism is so convenient (Score:1)
I think we're in violent agreement here. I never meant to imply that all technology is evil or whatever. I just wanted to say that technology, in and of itself, won't solve the world's problems. It needs support: Financial support, education support, legal support. I'm mostly cynical about humanity's ability to provide all that as well as the right technology, in a wa
Re:Cynicism is so convenient (Score:2)
Re:How sad is this? (Score:2)
Re:How sad is this? (Score:2)
Drinking water? How about food from your crops. If you can't talk to an Agricultural expert who can advise you on what to do about the weather, the latest seeds you're getting, the changes in the environment, you might not be eating this winter.
If your water was bad but you can't talk to a doctor about what your symtoms mean, you might treat it with
The question of "Why".... (Score:1, Offtopic)
The e-education for basic education is not that health. What will the village children think about the teacher? Are we so untouchable that
Census of India 2001 is an eye opener (Score:4, Informative)
The 2001 Census data has information on Houses, Household Amenities and Assets in India and has very interesting findings. It seems there are some 2.4 million places of worship in the country, as against 1.5 million schools and colleges and a mere 600,000 hospitals and dispensaries. No wonder there is so much unnecessary religious strife.
The point is, there is a lot of opportunity for growth and innovative technology is greatly needed there to increase the level of education and quality of life there. The question of which technology is most needed first is very difficult to answer.
Re:Census of India 2001 is an eye opener (Score:2, Funny)
how many of the temples were community centres? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Census of India 2001 is an eye opener (Score:2)
Re:Census of India 2001 is an eye opener (Score:4, Insightful)
I would guess that this is true for any area of the United States or any other democratic country that tolerates multiple religions.
A quick perusal of the Yellow Pages for Madison, Wisconsin, USA shows roughly half as many listings for schools as churches. And the combined number of hospitals, pharmacies, clinics and chiropractors is less than the number of schools.
So hardly an indicator of unnecessary religious strife. India's a giant complex democracy that is still very young. Hell it took the US almost 200 years to figure out it should let all its people vote. Tolerance does not grow easily. You must work at it hard. The fact that India even holds it together is impressive.
Re:Census of India 2001 is an eye opener (Score:5, Informative)
No, we never had riots as far as anyone can remember.
Before you read the 2001 Census Report, or that shiny worthless rag, India Today, may I point out to a more useful site on logical fallacies [datanation.com]? In particular, you'll note the similarity between your implied reasoning ("India has more religious structures than schools or hospitals. It also has a lot of religious strife. Therefore, the large number of religious structures causes strife.") and a logical fallacy called coincidental correlation [datanation.com].
By way of proof, I recommend Ashish Nandy's excellent tome, Exiled At Home [amazon.com], to really understand communal strife in India. Here's a short thesis:- 'Communal' riots are among the most secular phenomena in modern India. They have more to do with oppurtunistic politicians (of all religions, obviously), and a police force badly in need of reform, rather than heightened religiosity, or even, that Great Indian Distraction, Ayodhya.
Time for a big economics reality check (Score:5, Insightful)
WRONG.
Before you get all of the above which are very very expensive, as in 100s of millions of dollars. You have to find some sort of way to be productive like sewing textiles or above subsitance farming or factory production, etc. Any successful development story starts with the fact that the country or region in question made something first that people wanted and then it developed. If you build all this infrastructure wherever, as soon as the money stops flowing in, and it would have to flow in permanently and forever, it would all fall apart. This has happened over and over again in Sub-Saharan African and else where.
Re:Time for a big economics reality check (Score:1)
Re:Time for a big economics reality check (Score:3, Insightful)
Most people think that before you can produce anything economically you need clean drinking water,
Everyone buys bottled water anyway, so would it matter if the "drinking water" coming from the tap wasn't clean?
affordable housing,
Two words: Silicon Valley.
and modern hospitals.
Every so often the nurses strike over working conditions, not enough time with patients, etc.
Bottom line: You can produce lots of stuff economically without
Re:Time for a big economics reality check (Score:5, Insightful)
Education is the one thing that will help these villages succeed. If they know how to do more, and farm better, then the assumption is that they will make more money. If the people in the village have more money, then they will be able to modernize their village. Modern water and healthcare arent' cheap, and they don't appear on their own. The kiosks won't directly help this (you can't teleport the stuff over the kiosk), but it will help by education the people of the village so that they can make more money.
Let's close New York Airports and Phone Companies (Score:4, Insightful)
Gah! If it wasn't for technology like the Internet or TV you wouldn't know they were hungry (probably could by mail, but Americans are too lazy to become involved in mailed communication).
If it were for airplanes, you couldn't drop food shipments.
Priorities are fine. Food versus technology isa not prioritizing. It's basic neanderthal wanking pretending they're better because they're supposedly more concerned.
Luddite morons.
You must see beyond videoconferencing (Score:3, Insightful)
It's a poor country. What better way to improve the economy than to provide them with technology that allows them to be productive and earn a living even from such remote places?
A bit of training and you have potentially thousands of Google Answers [google.com] researchers, or chat-room moderators, or whatever jobs suitable for large amounts of low-qualified, low-wage work force who can work remotely online.
It's the logical step following the call-centres movement.
Computer-aided milk collection (Score:3, Informative)
Did any of you RTFA? (Score:2, Insightful)
Now do you understand? (Score:2, Interesting)
OK you (we) guys in the US who have been failing to deliver mass market videophones for decades... here is an Indian guy who does it over a crappy dial-up line. And they have a business model too. Now do you understand why your jobs are disappearing to India?
Cu-SeeMe and MS Netmeeting (Score:2)
It's not the first or best low-end video conferencing software - CU-SeeMe from Cornell University is older, and does an adequate job even over 28.8kbps modem lines, though you get more frames per second at higher speeds. The early versions were free, a
low-bandwidth, eh? (Score:2, Funny)
I weep.
Pictures and Scientific American (Score:1, Informative)
I found a site on the "hole in the wall" [niitholeinthewall.com] computers. Enjoy the site while it lasts, it doesn't look too promising.
Re:Pictures and Scientific American (Score:1, Insightful)
The Kalkaji Experiment
The first experiment of teaching computing skills to underprivileged children was done at Kalkaji, New Delhi. In January 1999, a hole was made in the boundary wall of NIIT office at Kalkaji and a computer kiosk was installed. As the computer was accessible from the outside through the opening in the boundary wall, the experiment was named as "Hole-In-The-Wall.
The objective of this experiment was to check if people would be interested in using an unmanned Inter
The computers used are Pentium PCs with... (Score:1, Informative)
As you might imagine, deploying Internet kiosks in economically backward parts of India is not quite simple. Besides the lack of infrastructure, the other challenges include providing a low-cost solution that can withstand harsh conditions like dust and extreme temperatures, and a kiosk that can be remotely admini
Dot com disease. (Score:5, Insightful)
No India will find a way of employing tech that will be radically different than the West. You can bet that they will learn from our mistakes caused by dot com stupidity and greed. No dot com debacle for them. The gold rush is over, we are about to lose out because we do not know how to be realistic in our commerce. We do not see the importance of the changes in the world economy.
The concept of a GNP is not a concept of economic growth, and to say that growth in GNP is a measure of developement is a falacious assumption, especially in countries like India of China.
To assume that this tech is expensive is rediculous, the cost of sending messangers, sending teachers to remote areas, Doctors, technicians,
administraters, health nurses, more than offsets the cost of the tech and equipment. Our problem in the west is that everything computer has to have bells, whistles, video candy, and super fast expensive communication tech. Funny but simple video communication that we have been able to do since the early 1990s will catch on and be a great boom for India. We ignored it because we didn't care to use it for anything other than goofy web garbage cam and it did not entertain us sufficiantly. We are becoming a shallow silly
over endulged bunch of brain dead consumers and it shows. Most of the rest of the world doesn't envy us, they fear, and some pity our greed.
Re:Dot com disease. (Score:1)
Haste to hate is the problem. (Score:2)
Don't bother posting such stories (Score:1)
Jhunjhunwala (Score:2, Interesting)
Their high bandwidth cellphone technology has been sold and deployed in both China and Brazil, but here in India our largest WLL cellphone network uses Qualcomm's CDMA2000 protocol..
funny the way the world works
Give 'em all VOIP... (Score:2)