Social Area 1

There is a lot that can be written about the social area. But my expertise in this area is, of course, limited. Similarly I assume your patience as a reader would be limited in this area since it would be like going over everything that you know already. So I will quickly boil down my thinking to 3 key elements:

1. Literacy
2. Poverty
3. Population

The above 3 elements are related by the vicious cycle that forms a positive feedback loop.

I refer once again to a reader comment that it is not clear what steps one should take. Just look at this area now. What have you contributed lately to any of the above social factors? If you do not feel like actively contributing, then you can always donate funds to deserving organizations that already are active in these areas.

Most of us know the most popular ones:

ASHA

CRY

There are a number of other organizations which I am sure each one of us is aware of - doing social service of all kinds - whether it is medical care, education, hunger projects and what-have-you. All you have to do is pick up something and contribute in anyway you can. Money or time. Remember my CAS theory (an earlier post), no contribution, by definition, will be wasted. But as mathematicians would put it, it has to be a non-negative, non-zero contribution.

Technology Area 2

There are heartening changes already happening in the technology area. You may already be aware of them but in case you're not, you can read about .....

The Simputer project to create low cost and smart card based personalized computers for rural as well as low-end urban markets:

http://www.simputer.org/simputer

The Open Source Foundation has much that we can leverage for the Indian market to ease the curse of dollar-denominated pricing of computing resources. Read this news about OpenOffice:

http://software.silicon.com/applications/0,39024653,39130760,00.htm

Rajesh Jain has some great ideas on evolving technologies and how we can shape the technology future in India exploiting utility/ASP based trends. In this article he talks about the Rs. 5000 PC ecosystem:

http://www.emergic.org/collections/tech_talk_the_rs_5000_pc_ecosystem.html

A paper on e-learning technologies and what they can do for rural India:

http://www.cdac.in/html/pdf/Session2.3.pdf

Take heart from knowing that a lot of people are involved in efforts already. This from CDAC:

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1040_22-5700701.html

And this from HP Labs India and our public sector:

http://www.itworld.com/Tech/2987/020514digitaldivide/pfindex.html

Renewable energy technologies and applications to improve power infrastructure in India in a socially responsible way:

http://www.teriin.org/division/eetdiv/reta/reta.htm

Medicine and life sciences on the offshoring bandwagon too:

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11898

Acceleration of biomedical technology in India:

http://www.biospectrumindia.com/content/movers/103111201.asp

On the advances sciences front, there's nanotechnology to consider:

http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/01-17-05.asp

These are some random tidbits of information to chew on. There are a number of avenues that dedicated people are exploring. But there is a lot more still to do. All it needs is people like you to put their heads together .....

Technology Area 1

In the next few posts I would like to concentrate on the technology area from my model. This is the area that I am most familiar with and have thought about a great deal. From regularly reading a lot of other blogs, I’ve also collected a lot of information. Here is some information to chew on:

http://www.emergic.org/collections/tech_talk_tomorrows_world.html

http://www.emergic.org/collections/tech_talk_commputing_grid.html

http://www.csa.iisc.ernet.in/bangit/bangdec/bangdec.html

My ideas are a mix of some old, some new already expressed or some completely new ideas. I need a lot of input and exchange of ideas to develop this further. But as a first step, we can all look into implementing some of the ideas below.

Here are the kinds of things we should plan to do in the technology area:

1. Form or join interest groups of technology watchers and how the technology can be applied to Indian context.
2. Form or join interest groups that have the werewithal to influence policy decisions at the Centre.
3. Start a mass movement in India to create an Open Technology Forum where individuals can contribute their efforts on common, widely beneficial projects. This can be modeled on the Open Source Foundation charter with the exception that these efforts need to benefit the evolving technology and applications in India.
4. Form or join groups that can convince the lower half of the Indian industry pyramid to embrace technology. Provide solutions tailored to them rather than pushing pre-existing models.
5. Seek out entrepreneurial opportunities in these areas.

If you know any groups and societies that actively work in these areas, please let me know for my interest as also for me to make links available here.