History Lesson: The Mission 2007 initiative was floated in 2005, and quickly found support from 'Green Revolution' MS Swaminathan, who is concerned about the lack of 'connection' between the farming sector and urban India. MSSRF supported meetings of potential stakeholders and enthusiasts, held in different parts of India, leading up to a formulation of a broad plan for driving connectivity within rural India by Independence Day 2007*. Back-of-the-envelope calculations put the cost at around Rs 6,300 cr, that would deliver connectivity to at least one node within each of India's 640,000 revenue villages. It was a totally FOSS-based plan. *60 years after Independence was declared, a date that had meaning for some of us
The government responded with alacrity, immediately squashing all hopes of anything sensible happening. As of now, the 'project' has been handed over to IL&FS, which took a year or more of private consultations (ie, excluding anyone from M2k7) to devise a curious tiered arrangement that would supervise the formation of so-called CSCs (community service centers). This plan is very inclusive, incorporating as it does a GoM project that was announced as a knee-jerk reaction to M2k7, from out of the MoCIT (the name of the Ministry keeps changing, depending I think on which of Karunanidhi's family members is appointed Minister). Every so often, one sees press releases announcing that 5,000 telecenters have been set up here or 10,000 there. They no longer talk about Mission 2007, just in case you were wondering. Oh yes, and in case you also wonder, the target has moved down to 100,000, which happened after then NASSCOM chief Kiran Karnik volunteered to negotiate the funds from the government (in his capacity as creator of the NASSCOM Foundation). I don't think there is a target date anymore, but that may be just me being a bit cynical. MSSRF still supports the training of rural leaders (Jawaharlal Nehru Fellows) who will help integrate any such initiatives, if and when these happen. However, I have no idea whether the IL&FS CSCs recognise such trained people. It hardly matters, because MSSRF's intention in training for rural leadership was to assist such initiatives to be grown upwards form locally expressed needs. On Tue, Sep 8, 2009 at 1:56 PM, jtd <[email protected]> wrote: > On Sunday 06 September 2009, Vickram Crishna wrote: > > > In fact, and this may be a very serious reason to join hands, digitising > > with FOSS tools and creating open standard documents online for access is > > in itself a way to forestall some 'public-private-partnership' from doing > > the same with proprietary formats. There are several such schemes > floating > > about already, beginning with the tatters of the Mission 2007 initiative. > > Please excuse my ignorance but What is Mission 2007 initiative? > > > -- > Rgds > JTD > _______________________________________________ > network mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.fosscom.in/listinfo.cgi/network-fosscom.in > -- Vickram http://communicall.wordpress.com
_______________________________________________ network mailing list [email protected] http://lists.fosscom.in/listinfo.cgi/network-fosscom.in
