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ARAhaat.comDespite the fact that India is still a primarily rural economy, the majority of the areas outside the major cities are untouched by modern technology, especially the Internet. Much of the information that members of India's agrarian society need - crop prices, new crop cultivation technique, weather reports, etc. - is more often than not ill-organized and difficult to find, even if one actually has the means to access the Net. Enter TARAhaat.com, a start-up founded by respected entrepreneur Ashok Khosla. The purpose of TARAhaat is to target the rural audience and provide a means for village communities to easily access and share information on economic, social, and health issues. (9) Access is to be provided via village 'cyber-kiosk', implemented and maintained by local entrepreneurs. One organization already officially on board is the National Youth Cooperative, which manages 200,000 youth clubs nationwide. The system will feature exceptional ease of use, including support for Hindi (the Indian national language), and strong graphic elements and voice commands for illiterate users. The site will allow for a great increase in connectivity and communication between the rural communities and the rest of the country. Workers will be able to research both urban and rural employment opportunities without leaving their homes. Farmers will be able to direct negotiate contracts for the sale of their produce with wholesalers, avoiding intermediaries and increasing their profits. In addition, the site will allow villagers to obtain information about commodity prices, land records, health services, and even matrimonials. In addition, the extensive development and operational infrastructure involved will generate a great deal of employment. (4) Utilizing the RailwaysOne of the major impediments to the widespread growth of the Internet throughout India is the poorly developed telecom infrastructure. While there are plans to upgrade the setup with a full-blown nationwide fiber-optic network, there is at the moment still a strikingly low level of phone access outside the urban sectors. An innovative plan has been proposed to circumvent this problem. The scheme involves utilizing the existing cabling laid down alongside the railway network This cable, originally installing for control and communication, invariably has free bandwidth, which, according to electrical engineering professor and project leader Ashok Jhunjhunwala, invariably has spare capacity which could be utilized for data transmission. Jhunjhunwala noted that the railway network in India was extensively developed - "we have a railway station, on average, every 8 km". The plan, involving the construction of cybercafes in the railway stations, as well as providing wireless access to neighboring communities, could potentially help connect 4000 towns and over 100,000 households to the Net, within as little as 2 years. The plan is currently in a test phase, with a small network being constructed along 40 km of railroad track linking 5 towns in South India. (3) Public Communications ServicesCertain public telephone offices now allow users to record video email messages, which can then be transmitted to established accounts just like regular text-based email. This service, provided at a reasonable fee, allows for effective long distance communication, crossing the barriers of both literacy and income. The Information Villages Research ProjectThis represents a textbook effort at rural IT development. The project involved the setting-up of four 'Information Shops' in the villages of Embalam, Kizhur, Mangalam, and Veerampattinam in Pondicherry, located in South India. The area covered has an extremely poorly developed telecommunication network, with only 9 working public phones covering a population of 22,000. A local area network was designed, using VHF radio as a means of transmitting data. A hub was established in the village Villianur which was termed the "Value Addition Center" - here, project staff helped make online information available to local users. Each shop consists of a PC with multimedia capability, along with a printer, scanner, modem, and a specially designed interface. The shops allowed the village community to easily access the Internet, and provided an excellent means for inter-village communication. Some specific impacts of the experiment are enumerated below: (5)
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