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Wielding the literacy
chakla in desert
Discovering the correlation between what was typed on the keyboard and what appeared on the computer, sent waves of animated chattering across the gathering, says Sanjiv Kataria, Senior Vice-President, NIIT, which initiated this Dal Batti Computer Project along with various NGOs in Rajasthan. "The women just loved typing their names on the fluorescent screen. It was all very new, very mind boggling, and above all, very exhilarating," he says. All this happened in a quiet Rajasthani village, Doli, in Jodhpur district. It is a sandy, austere village, with not too many distinguishing characteristics. But thanks to ambitious vision and dreams of computer literacy, the village could well be the most IT-savvy domain within the desert state in near future, he says. Not only did the initiative in Doli village enable these people’s representatives at the grassroots level to cross the digital divide, it also contributed towards narrowing the rural-urban chasm, that currently separates over 80 per cent of India residing in villages from the elite 20 per cent, IT experts say. With the first click of the mouse at Doli, simple village folk gained parity with their contemporaries in the IT-oriented cities of India and made a vital move to integrate into the emerging global e-environment, he says. "The recognition of the fact that computer literacy movement at the village level needs to be driven by the more knowledgeable and experienced panchayat leaders, inspired NIIT and other NGOs to build the program around these democratically elected captains," he says. These repositories of IT knowledge will, in the next phase, percolate this awareness, down to the ordinary men and women of the village. Doli’s citizens will then walk tall in the world of computer literates, he says. "With more and more applications like online reservation system, e-mail in local language and the Internet cafes reaching rural areas, it has become important that even literate villagers are trained in handling," says Dr Sugata Mitra, head, Centre for Research in Cognitive Systems. "From tribals of Adilabad district in Andhra Pradesh to villagers in Jodhpur and slum dwellers on the outskirts of Delhi, a silent computer literacy revolution is taking place, courtesy the government, non-government organisations and some informaiton technology education institutes," he says. While some efforts are going on in rural areas, much more needs to be done, he says, noting there are millions of Indians, especially in smaller towns and villages and in lower income sections of the society who have been left out. "There is an urgent need to bridge that divide otherwise touts would take over, who would be cheating computer illiterates for small services like sending an e-mail or checking the reservation," warns Mitra. Computer literacy can be
achieved with minimal or no formal education, he says noting "500
million Indian Also, language is not
going to be a problem in the near future... if rural India goes on the
Internet, there will be an absolute flood of Indian-language content
from people trying to sell computer education to them, he says. |
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THEY
were all in a festive mood. It resembled one of those well-known melas
that Rajasthan is famous for. But the men and women, dressed in their
traditional attire, were crowded together for a different reason
altogether — to catch their first glimpse of a computer! A chakla,
masquerading as a mouse pad, bore witness to the excitement, the
curiosity and the whispered urgency of the assembled villagers and their
desire to see and know the magical new device being unveiled before
them.