ICTpost Media Action Bureau
What can ICT bring for the inhabitants of 600,000 Indian villages? How India is empowering the poor and marginalised citizens to participate in the emerging knowledge society? How will India provide voice to her millions of citizens? The following projects are attempting at answering such questions and exploring the complex interactions between ICT and society.
Rural ERP: e-Biz & Commerce
India has nearly 50 Million registered MSMEs, of which 95% of them are Micro Enterprises. Only 10-15% of them are having adopted some form of systematic IT usage. The main barriers to technology adoption are Lack of Suitable and affordable Products, lack of knowledge in choosing the right product, and high cost of maintaining the system.
The rural ERP helps micro and small businesses to run their businesses effectively and efficiently in their local language by managing their day-to-day business activities. It functions as an Enterprise Resource Planning Application for MSMEs delivered on Cloud as a SAAS product and available in 9 major Indian Languages thus bridging the digital divide among enterprises. No upfront investment is needed for setup, the implementation or maintenance of the infrastructure. The entrepreneurs can access the resource from anytime and anywhere using PCs, Laptops, Tablets, Smart phones and Mobile phones.
enajori: e-Culture & Heritage
Often, the coverage of the Northeast remains trapped in stereotypes. With its conflicts, its tribes and its underdevelopment, this is India’s area of darkness, an area of little interest to the media and to those responsible for governance and more generally in the greater cultural space of the country. Enajori.com is the first online monthly bilingual magazine from Assam, which is also one of the most popular websites of the region with monthly average hits of 2.5 lakh readers. The aim of the project is to showcase Assam’s rich and diverse culture represented through its various ethnicities as well as diversity in language and religion. The online portal delivers a full database of Assam.
Rocke Talk: e-Entertainment & Games
Rocke Talk aims at making communication fun, easy, socially inclusive by breaking through language barriers and making the application free of cost. The advantage of the system is that it absolutely feels close to just being there in person. The application enables its users to post messages, join live communities, send voice and video enabled greetings, and upload an unlimited number of photos, videos and audios.
IVRS based Daily Monitoring System: e-Governance
Lack of accurate and timely information has always plagued the MIS of large scale government operations. The Cloud Telephony and IVRS based Daily Monitoring System has been devised by the Mid Day Meal Authority, Uttar Pradesh, as a solution to these impediments. The initiative is a unique innovation, through which real time; grassroots level data is collected systematically from over 150,000 schools on a daily basis and is made available on the web for the monitoring of the Mid-day Meal scheme. It marked a paradigm shift in the process of data collection for many and decentralized governments and even private programs.
Pharma Secure: e-Health
Fake tuberculosis and malaria drugs alone are estimated to kill 700,000 people a year. PharmaSecure enables patients to verify the authenticity of their medicine and provides options for other healthcare services. It covers the “last mile” of the pharmaceutical industry by engaging consumers in a low cost, two way communications about their drug utilization and related behaviors. In so doing, PharmaSecure addresses five of the most urgent challenges in health and pharmaceutical delivery: Counterfeit drugs, adherence and persistence, consumer–level behavior intelligence, real-time multi-level distribution intelligence, and healthcare access.
Holistic Model for Employment of Persons with Disability: e-Inclusion
In developing countries, 80% to 90% of persons with disabilities of working age are unemployed. This model helps for the economic independence and dignity of persons with disability such as visually, hearing and physically disabled as well as those suffering of muscular dystrophy, cerebral palsy, mental illness and intellectual disability. This vision has been achieved through the application of a holistic model which aimed at creating and forecasting demand (via a business case), developing the supply of candidates with disability, providing simple but innovative workplace solutions to enable the person with disability to work in companies.
NIOS Online: e-Learning & Science
This e-Learning project makes available new opportunities for people with disabilities, and to encourage development of technologies that will help achieve these goals. This institution is using ICT as a major strategy towards reaching the unreached and providing the quality support to learners especially to people with a disability. The NIOS Online project has brought convenience to its learners and client group, examination and accreditation and enhanced the quality of the support services to its learners.
Chai With Lakshmi: e-Media & Journalism
Chai with Lakshmi is an online talk show that connects the average Indian internet user with projects and people who are impacting the quality of urban lives and the future of the nation. The initiative aims at bringing across that India is much more than the political challenges it is facing, more than the trials the average middle class Indian faces on a day to day basis and much more than caste and religious divides. The program avoids preaching and instead tries to encourage in every single webisode. The viewer should be left thinking positive. The show shares inspiring examples relevant to contemporary India and tries to inspire fellow citizens on how they can participate constructively to influence India’s future positively. editor@ictpost.com