Then why not call it India, Hindustan? Names change only when people use them. Its tough at first, I know. First they laugh at you, then they afraid of you, then they buy you ice cream.

but reading a good novel is not always a priority to those struggling to feed their families.

Illiteracy is a major handicap. It makes no sense to see deprivation purely in terms of income poverty. The kinds of participatory opportunities you have in society are determined by literacy. As an example, female agency, fertility reduction, the survival of children have been shown to improve with higher rates of literacy. All of the listed are pressing problems in India. We must remember that different kinds of handicaps reinforce each other. Often a women’s life is not improved solely by her ability to find work. Work and income in itself mean nothing if you do not have control over ur life and body.

What is the $100 Laptop, really? The proposed $100 machine will be a Linux-based, with a dual-mode display—both a full-color, transmissive DVD mode, and a second display option that is black and white reflective and sunlight-readable at 3× the resolution. The laptop will have a 500MHz processor and 128MB of DRAM, with 500MB of Flash memory; it will not have a hard disk, but it will have four USB ports. The laptops will have wireless broadband that, among other things, allows them to work as a mesh network; each laptop will be able to talk to its nearest neighbors, creating an ad hoc, local area network. The laptops will use innovative power (including wind-up) and will be able to do most everything except store huge amounts of data.

Wind-up power should solve problems of transformers blowing up!

I will continue to call it Bangalore. I have continued to use Bombay and Madras in conversations. And people always understand. You are of course free to call it Bengaluru.And I will understand.

Raj Reddy got it right, I must say.Microsoft’s experiment is only the latest (and not as novel as the magazine makes it sound actually) in a series of efforts being made in India and elsewhere in the developing world, in spreading functional literacy.

I happen to know a lot about the CBFL program mentioned in Abhi’s earlier post (Don’t ask me how, please.Just trust me.Thanks). F.C. Kohli is not an Indian software engineer. He is the Father of Indian IT industry ( he started TCS, the first and largest Indian IT major). And CBFL is one of his pet ideas, developed and implemented by TCS as part of its corporate social responsibility porgram.

I don’t find any thing wrong with that pedagogical model. But to say that it has been a success is a grand exaggeration. The program was first implemented in Andhra Pradesh and the software was titled ‘Avasaram’ (The Need). It used horrendous color schemes and badly done up graphics (the developers did not know about heuristics, cultural factors in usability, so on and so forth.Long story.sigh).

As it was a freebie from the IT major, the State Govt did not mind extending a helping hand.The publicity was not bad for a CM who was busy promoting his IT-savviness in front of visiting trade delegations and IT honchos like Gates.

If the program was really effective, it would have made a difference to the villagers who were the ‘subjects’. I don’t think it did.Today, this CBFL program is limited to being talked about as a case study. That’s all.

Two years back, IBM tried to connect schools in slum areas in Bangalore through a WAN, provided some connectivity and attempted education through a TV channel. IBM had achieved great results with a similar program in the US a few years back. But somehow they could not replicate the idea successfully in Bangalore. I mean, they started well, but could not sustain it.

Come to think of it, people watch TV in even remote parts of India.And UGC has a channel dedicated for public education programming. The programs are so boring that only semi-nerds like me used to watch them (for the science classes of course).Personally, I believe TV is a more accessible medium to spread any awareness in a country like India.What with convergence and all, it should be possible for Microsoft to deliver their IT solution through TV.

Enough of a ramble I guess. Good post. Liked it.