Indian Nominations in 2003 for WSA

The Expert for India did a massive campaign with online, email, e-groups, offline, and one-to-one talks to motivate hundreds of thousands to suggest their choice of nominations for the WSA-IS Award.

Based on various sources, suggestions, knowledge base, and many experts opinion, the Expert made a matrix of parameters to choose the best possible in each category, resting aside the expert’s own possible bias towards hyped up products/application.

Following are the list of parameters on which the nominations have been finalized:

– Actual Impact
– Innovation
– Significance to Society
– Use of Technology
– Efficiency of Deployment
– Academic/International Recognition
– Sustainability/Commercial Viability

E-Learning: Total Literacy by TCS

The Expert chose the “Total Literacy by TCS because of its focus on adult education. Although, in a country where apparently 200 million adults cannot read or write, this literacy programme may seem like a drop in the ocean. Yet, think of the difference it makes to the life of each beneficiary and no success is small. It is all the difference between being empowered or not.

E-Culture: NIITs the Hole in the wall

The Expert chose the “Hole in the wall” application because of its cultural impact on the kids of the local villages where the PC is installed in a walled kiosk allowing access to mouse and keyboard only. And none of the machines are humanly monitored, yet there has never been any incident of mis-treatment to the computers.

In fact, the project is well monitored remotely through various embedded applications, users’ behavious, usage pattern, their grabbing power, and various learning behaviour.

The project, as it is not monitored in terms of content or anything, it has created a culture of computers as they want, whenever they want, and in many cases, highly organizing.

E-Governance: E-Seva, Andhra Pradesh

The expert chose E-Seva project for the E-governance category because of its mass effect, positive willingness by the state government to adopt new medium, technologies for the benefit of the masses, unlike typical of any Indian politician.

The project is also chosen keeping in mind the versatile services that it offers, which I am sure will be procured from the concerned person mentioned here for further contacts.

Also, this project has been an inspiration for many other state chief ministers to look at their responsibilities positively and address the masses with new technologies so that benefit would be geometrical.

E-Entertainment: Contest 2 Win

The beauty of Contest2Win is that it was started in the dotcom era, and has been the best success story with huge mass effect.

Although this entertainment free to consumer website had started with web as medium, only targeting Indian youth, today is equally popular on mobile, using all medium of information as a supplement, such as print, TC, radio, hoardings, and leaflets. It has reached in China in mandarin language and has penetrated more than 225 million population through web and mobile.

E-Inclusion: N-Logue

The prime reason for the expert to nominate n-Logue in the category of e-inclusion is the technological innovation of corDECT technology by IIT Madras under Professor Ashok Jhunjhunwala’s guidance.

CorDECT is an advanced Wireless Access system designed keeping the economic realities of a country like India in mind. It has been developed by Midas Communication Technologies and IIT, Madras, in association with Analog Devices, USA.

The technology’s usage around a business model is creating a nationwide penetration of cheap connectivity with various services around it, giving tempting invitation for entrepreneurship at a village and local level.

The necessary commercialization of technology, as it is desired, is happening in this case. So much so, that even other developing countries are adopting this technology, and inviting n-Logue to install the technology in their own state.

E-Health: TeleDoc

The Expert chose TeleDoc for eHealth because it’s an example of the use of latest technology like Internet, mobile, and offering the ancient wisdom based knowledge and information about the health problems, such as ayurveda, etc.

E-Science: Simputer

The Simputer is an original scientific innovation by Indians in India which is similar to PDA, works in many Indian languages, interactive, audio-visual thus relevant to the 80 percent of Indian mass which is oral.

E-Biz: e-Choupal

e-Choupal is a game-changing industry transformation vision. Through creative use of Information Technology, this new business model creates sustainable shareholder value by reorganizing the commodity supply chain, simultaneously improving the competitiveness of Indian agriculture and contributes to enhancing rural prosperity.

eChoupal is a novel interactive transaction and fulfillment channel designed to suit the unique character of rural India (viz. small farms, numerous intermediaries and infrastructure bottlenecks). As a collaborative model built through innovative usage of technology, it leverages the physical transmission capabilities of the current intermediaries who deliver critical value for a very low cost in a weak infrastructure environment, and yet dis-intermediates them from the chain of information flow and market signals to build a globally competitive demand led food supply chain.

TeleDoc and n-Logue Communications were the two Indian organizations out of 8 Indian nominations, to win the World Summit Award Grand Jury 2003 at Geneva for best e-Content practices worldwide.

Over 800 of the worlds best examples of e-content and creativity from 130 participating countries competed for the award. Of the 40 awards presented in eight categories last year, TeleDoc, a Jiva initiative bagged one in the e-health category and the other Indian entry to win an award was n-Logue Communications, a company promoted by IIT Madras’ TeNet Group, which offers low-cost internet and telecommunications services in rural areas.

Teledoc uses leading-edge communications technology to bring high-quality healthcare directly to rural villages. Using the Teledoc Mobile Information System, village-based healthcare workers record and transmit diagnostic data to doctors at a central clinic who diagnose illnesses and prescribe medicines for rural patients.

n-Logue Communications Pvt. Ltd is an initiative of TeNeT group of IIT Madras, with a charter to provide and operate telecom and Internet services in small towns and rural areas of India using its indigenously developed CoRDECT technology.

The Indian nominations in 2003 in various categories were :

1. ‘Total Literacy’ by TCS in the E-Learning category.
2. NIIT’s ‘The hole in the wall’ in the E-Culture category.
3. ‘E-Seva, Andhra Pradesh’ in the E-Governance category.
4. ‘Contest2Win’ in the E-Entertainment category.
5. ‘N-Logue’ in the E-Inclusion category.
6. ‘TeleDoc’ in the E-Health category.
7. ‘Simputer’ in the E-Science category.
8. ‘e-Choupal’ in the Ebiz category.

The award has indeed brought TeleDoc national and international attention as requests have started pouring in from Srilanka and Indonesia to run pilot TeleDoc projects. n-Logue too has expressed interest in taking TeleDoc to the villages where they are active.