On 6/7/05, Edward Cherlin wrote: > Spot on. We install a national wireless network reaching to the > villages, and one computer per village to get things moving. This allows > local farmers to access world prices and increase their revenues, as in > the ICT e-choupal project. Then, again as with ICT, we or somebody > creates an e-commerce portal to sell to the villages. What the villagers > need is essentially everything, in the same way that the first Sears > catalog offered everything that a household needed to everybody in the > US within buggy or cart range of a railroad station.... > > Would any existing organizations taking part in this discussion like to > create a piece of this project?
A project I am associated with already has some pieces of this concept in place. What is lacking right now are sufficient computers and connectivity. My part is the latter, while the computers are apparently going to be installed in a big way across the command area by the government, under a local government support scheme, later this year. A commerce portal, supporting offline transactions, has already been created by CDAC and is being tested, while other pieces of locally developed software relate to local self government needs, both data collection and information dissemination. Others in India may take it from CDAC as well - I do not know what CDAC's policy is on disseminating or supporting this application internationally. In my opinion it is too early to comment on the impact of this project. However, this list generates so many ideas I am sure that they will continue to be welcome and, equally, as more applications are developed and their usefulness examined, I am sure these will become available to others who want to have similar modules working on their own Very Wide networks. > It is not actually required that governments understand ahead of time. > Staying out of the way and allowing someone else to do it is sufficient. > However, if we can convince local government that it is in their > interest to be civic boosters (another 19th century concept) and to grow > the local economy, and thus get their cooperation, we can do many things > better, faster, and cheaper. Frankly, although the project design involves local government right from the onset, the actual cooperation needed (mostly in terms of staying out of the way) is from both state and central government departments, mostly because of hangovers of both attitude and of antediluvian regulations that need to be modified or junked. -- Vickram ------------ ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: <http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/>
