Manthan-AIF Award 2006 Grand Jury Process
Date: 1-2 July, 2006
Venue: Digital Empowerment Foundation, Sarvapriya Vihar, New Delhi-16

The Manthan Award 2006 jury is over. Around 250 nominations were screened, winners chosen and results are kept in secret wrap until August 5, 2006 when the Award giving ceremony shall take place in New Delhi.

Jury members from different parts of the country were invited to screen and pick up the winners. Experts in different walks of life, these members assembled together at the Head Office of Digital Empowerment Foundation, New Delhi in Sarvapriya Vihar, near IIT, New Delhi. The jury process started at 11 A.M. on 1st July.

Mr. Osama Manzar, Chairman, Manthan Award, briefed the jury members about the jury process before the actual jury sat down for the tedious work.

TheThe Manthan-AIF Award Nomination 2006
The response for call of nominations for the Manthan-AIF Award this year has been overwhelming and over 250 nominations were received from all over India for the fourteen categories defined by the Manthan-AIF Award 2006.

The fourteen categories are:

E-Learning
E-Business
E-Culture
E-Entertainment
E-Science
E-Inclusion & Livelihood
E-Localization
E-Education
E-Health
E-Environment
E-Governance
E-News
E-Youth
M-Content

Manthan-AIF Grand Jury
The Manthan-AIF Award 2006 Grand Jury took place in DEF office at Sarvapriya Vihar, New Delhi on July 1st & 2nd. It brought together 16 experts from all kind of relevant field, such as academia, media, industry, associations, civil society, and technology. The jury had been independent, non-political and only followed the rules and guidelines set out by the Manthan-AIF Award. All selection and award decisions were made by the jury were taken as final and was not necessitated to be challenged legally or in any other way.

All nominated products were evaluated in a two-round judging process, and subsequently, India’s Best e-Contents and Applications (3 products/nominations in each of the 14 categories) were selected. Around 5 further products (Best Products) were awarded with a special mention. The decision for the jury process has been made by the Manthan-AIF Award Board of Directors, which is inline with World
Summit Award jury processes.

Jury and Selection Process
The Manthan-AIF Award jury was composed of most eminent content Industry personalities, proposed from government, industry database of evaluators, such as academia, media, industry, associations, civil society, and technology. The final jurors have been selected by the Board of Directors of the Manthan-AIF Award.

In all total 15 jury members assembled together for the Manthan Award screening and selection process. The members list consisted of the following:

Prof. Ashok Jhunjunwala: He is a professor from IIT, Chennai and is well known for his pioneering lead in various tasks carried out by n-Logue Communications Ltd in India providing alternative ICT options for grassroots development. He was the Chairman for the 1st day of Manthan-AIF Grand Jury Process.

Prof Anil Gupta: He is a professor at IIM, Ahmedabad and is associated with Sristi, an NGO as well as with National Innovation Foundation as a Vice-Chairman. He was the Chairman for the 2nd day of Manthan-AIF Grand Jury Process.

Mr. Tanmoy Chakrabarty: He is the Vice President & Head- Global Government Industry Group, Tata Consultancy Services, New Delhi.

Ms. Mridula Chandra: She is the Secretary, Health Research & Development Centre, Jaipur, Rajasthan.

Mr. Frederick Noronho: He is a well known free lancer journalist based in Goa. He is the pioneer in running so many group email services including bytesforall.

Mr. Jerry Almeida: He is leading a confederation of NGOs call iCONGO (Indian Confederation of NGOs).

Ms. Rufina Fernandes: She is associated with Nasscom Foundation and is stationed at Mumbai.

Mr. Ravi Gulati: He is running an organasition call Manzil, working for street and slum children in Delhi.

Dr. Subho Ray: He is the President of Internet & Mobile Association of India.

Mr. Ravi Gupta: He is the Director of Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies, Noida, Uttar Pradesh.

Mr. V. K. Dharmadhikari: He is scientist with Department of IT, Government of India.

Mr. Reuben Samuels: He is associated with WHO, India and is based in New Delhi

Mr. Subhendu Parth: He is the senior Assistant Editor of Dataquest, Gurgaon.

Mr. Mr. Rajan Varada: He is associated with Unicef, Hyderabad and heads an organisation call TFTP.

Mr. Hareesh S Belawadi: He is the Joint Director, ASCENT, Bangalore.

Representing the e-Governance Division, Department of Information Technology, Government of India was Mr. Ashish Sanyal, Director, e-Governance. Mr. Sanyal was the observer along with Mr. J. Sundarakrishnan, Regional Head, Digital Equalizer, AIF, New Delhi.

It was Prof. Jhunjunwala who chaired the first day jury meet and Prof. Anil Gupta chaired the second day meet. The chairs helped in making the process start and complete in time without any hassle.

The jury acted independently from the organizers and convenors and all vested interests, and followed only the guidelines for participation published in advance for the Award. All selection and award decisions made by the jury were final. The selections of the winners were made by the jury. The jury was given full freedom to choose not to give an award in any given category.

Jury Location and Evaluators Briefing
The jury meetings and all evaluation took place in New Delhi on July 1st and 2nd 2006, at the office of Digital Empowerment Foundation, where suitable technical infrastructure and high speed online access for each of the evaluators were made available.

A comprehensive official instruction of the jury regarding the call for entries, the entire evaluation process, the Award rules and the rules governing the jury evaluation based on the documents approved by the Manthan-AIF Award Board and this Jury Evaluation Guide was made available.

Evaluation Criteria
Elaboration of the categories of the Award and the criteria were given and explained during the briefing of evaluators by the moderator Mr. Osama Manzar, Chairman, Manthan Award. The criteria were tied to the concept of value added for users and e-contents for a purpose.

1. CONTENT: Quality and comprehensiveness of content
2. INTERFACE: Ease of use: functionality, navigation and orientation;
3. Value added through MM; Attractiveness of design
4. STRENGTH OF IDEA & EXECUTION: Value of the idea and how effectively it has been executed
5. IMPACT: Impact on the targeted audience
6. TECHNICAL REALIZATION: Quality of craftsmanship & Creativity
7. Strategic importance for the global development of the Information Society
8. Accessibility according to the W3C ( www.w3.org)

Switching the category of the product
The jury was given the right to switch a product from one category to another if the category chosen by the producer is recognized as unsuitable. Even during the evaluation process product category were switched in the e-learning and education ones. That category switch was the result of a discussion followed by a vote amongst the panel members.

The Mathan-AIF Jury Process

Round 1
The Jury was divided into panels, each panel with 2/3 jurors;
The products were divided into groups, according to the product categories.

Outcome: A Shortlist of maximum of 6 products per category (based mainly on the rank list of technical score)

Round 2
Panel Presentations of the Top 6 per category, made by the panels to the entire Jury. Discussion and voting on the winner per category by the plenary were taken up.

Outcome: A Winners List of 3 nominations per category.

Special Mentions
Panel Presentations and discussion on the best products from each category based mainly on the rank list from the second round) and also those who would have gone to third round but did not made it to the final list were picked up as special mentions.

Outcome: A list of special mentions – best products from each of the 5 national regions, one/two/3 per category depending upon the consensus from the jurors were made.

The Actual Jury Process:
On the first day jury members went through the nominations for screening. Members were divided into groups to go through the 14 categories of Manthan-AIF Award. Seven groups were made to go through the 14 categories. Members had a tough task to curtail down nominations to a minimum few in each category for voting purposes. On July 2nd the actual process of presentation of views of members on the nominations chosen for voting took place.

Each group were asked to present their cases for selecting their respective nominations for the voting purposes. Once this was over, the actual voting took place. It took good 7-8 hours for the voting process to be over. Power point presentations were made to present the cases for notable nominations in each category.

And finally the winners were clear by evening. Except in few categories, every category was chosen with three respective winners. Interestingly, a good decision has been taken to felicitate community radio activities in India from this year onwards.

Differences cropped in on number of key issues like whether some special mention could be made for some exemplary nominations. Finally the voting option helped to sort out the issues.

Views of the Jurors

 

Dr Reuben Samuel
“It was very interesting experience for me. I found that it was good to recognize those who have started something innovative.”

Rajan Varada
“It was a whole diverse set of content in all these categories, just the fact that I’m here with such fantastic group of intellectuals, strong people in the field has been a very good experience for me.”

Mridula Chandra
“I feel that there is a lot of scope of grassroot level people to come forward. It is a very good opportunity for the people who have never been acknowledged can become visible. Last year I was the privileged one to win the award in the e-Health Category.”

Sajan Venniyoor
“The process has been very democratic, lot of arguments, heated discussions but ultimately I think when the results come out, it should represent pretty much the cream.”

Rufina Frernandes
“I truly believe that content is the crucial part and element to the success of any grassroot information dissemination. I intend to take some of these award winning content to be deployed by the NASSCOM Foundation. We have made a beginning with last year’s award winning entry called Sisu Samarakshak by UNICEF & converted into Marathi and now deploying it in our centers in Maharashtra, we will do the same in other languages.”

Prof. Anil Gupta
“There was lot of stress on the impact that most people were making use of the technology and in a few cases the creativity or the originality of the thought was very much appreciated.”

Subho Ray
“The process of the jury for the last 2 days was extremely robust, there was a lot of discussion & debate, some times it got very heated but the chairpersons were very powerful & were able to maintain peace.”

Ravi Gulathi
“People from all walks of life, experiences, are together to make a statement. I found it very interesting to get view points from many different people.”

Ravi Gupta
“I was exposed to fantastic work being done in this school of e-Content base in the country.”

Frederick Noronha
“I found this an interesting exercise, I was involved with the e-Education & e-Localisation track. We came across a lot of interesting projects.”

The Manthan-AIF Award 2006 Jury

Chairman Of Jury (day 1)
Prof. Ashok Jhunjunwala
Professor, IIT Madras, Chennai
Prof Ashok Jhunjhunwala is from IIT Madras, and very well known for his innovative ideas in the areas of telecom revolution. He is also an incubator of many successful ideas. He helped in founding n-Logue, the company which started as the rural ISP and expanded into Common Service Centers based in rural areas.

Chairman Of Jury (day 2)
Prof. Anil Gupta
Professor, IIMAhmedabad &
Executive Vice Chairman, NIF,
Ahmedabad
Prof Gupta is from IIM Ahmedabad. He is Executive Chairman of National Innovation Foundation. He also founded and runs organisations like Sristi, HoneyBee, and GIAN. Prof Gupta is a proponent of Social Entrepreneurship and leaves no stone unturned in globalizing the local innovations, especially coming from the villages of India. He has traveled more than 2,500 kilometers to find local innovation across the rural villages of India.

Moderator
Osama Manzar
Chairman, Manthan Award &
Director, Digital Empowerment Foundation
Osama is the Chairman of the Manthan Award and Director of Digital Empowerment Foundation, the organiser of Manthan Award. He is also on the board of World Summit Award, the International affiliate of Manthan Award and DEF. He has written three books so far on e-Content and Internet Economy. He enjoys putting all possible effort in making the local content reach out to global audience – the Manthan Award is formed to achieve that purpose among others

Observer
Ashis Sanyal
Director E-Gov, DIT
New Delhi
Mr. Sanyal is Director, E-Governance Programme Management Unit (EGPMU), Department of Information Technology, M/o Communications & Information Technology. He is a great proponent of spreading knowledge without inhibition, and has been putting great efforts in making the CSC (Common Service Centers) project of DIT to achieve its best objectives and goals.

Observer cum Co-Moderator
Sundar Krishnan
Head, ICT Division,
AIF, New Delhi
Mr. Sundar Krishnan is the Head of ICT division of American India Foundation. He has earlier worked with Media Lab Asia.

Members of The Grand Jury

Frederick Noronha
Freelance Journalist,
Goa
Frederick Noronha is a Goa-based independent journalist, co-founder of BytesForAll & active chronicler of ICT4D initiatives in India. He is also founder of indialists.org (a network of alternative mailing lists) and www.goa-india.org(creating space for alternative voices from Goa), and for the past decade he has been a member of the Admin Volunteer Team of Goanet (www.goanet.org), Goa’s oldest and largest mailing list.

Vinnie Mehta
Executive Director,
Manufactures Association of Information Technology,
New Delhi
Vinnie Mehta has been involved in the promotion and polices formulation pertinent to the IT industry with the Centre and the State Governments in India as also internationally since 1992. He delivers lectures on industry strategy with reputed management institutes. He also conducts training programs and seminars for the IT industry. Prior to MAIT, Vinnie has worked for 2 years on the SCADA system (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) with the Gas Authority of India Limited.

Tanmoy Chakrabarty
VP & Head of the
Global Government
Industry Group.
TCS
Tanmoy Chakrabarty is the Vice President & Head of the Global Government Industry Group at TCS – Tata Consultancy Services, based in New Delhi. He is responsible for Sales and Business Development for TCS for the Government Industry worldwide. He has over 22 years of Sales & Marketing and Business Development. He is a member of the IT Sub-Committee at CII.

Dr Subho Ray
President,
Internet and Mobile Association of India,
Mumbai
President, Internet and Mobile Association of India(IMAI). As the President, Subho heads the permanent secretariat of the association and is currently responsible for driving & delivering several turnkey objectives to change mindsets and working towards a mission of “100 million Internet users online” + “robust e-economy growth” from the Indian – citizen/consumer, business, and government point of view/perspective.

Sajan Venniyoor
Community TV,
Doordarshan, Prasar
Bharti, New Delhi
After 15 years in radio, and a brief stint in the Prasar Bharati secretariat, Venniyoor moved to Doordarshan, where he presently works in their community TV (‘Narrowcasting’) division, as well as Doordarshan’s DTH project, ‘DD Direct’.

Ravi Gupta
Editor – i4D Magazine
Noida
Ravi Gupta represents Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies (CSDMS), an NGO founded in 1997. His organisation has been involved in ICT4D issues. He is the editor of i4d (www.i4donline.net), eGov (www.egovonline.net) and Digital Learning (www.digitalLEARNING.in) magazines. He can be contacted at Ravi.Gupta@csdms.in

Rufina Fernandes
CEO,
Nasscom Foundation,
Mumbai
Ms. Rufina Fernandes holds significant responsibility for overall operations of Nasscom Foundation. Ms. Fernandes’s career that spans over 18 years includes managing a family business as well as assignments with Alpic Finance and thereafter with GTL Limited. Prior to joining NASSCOM Foundation, she was Sr. Vice President (Strategic Initiatives & Head – CSR).

Hareesh Belawadi
Joint Director, ASCENT,
Bangalore
He now leads ASCENT’s(Asian Centre for Entrepreneurial Initiatives) cluster development initiatives and also assists in the design, marketing, and delivery of ASCENT’s Entrepreneurship Development Services such as training, research, counseling, and project consulting. After his degree in Mechanical Engineering from MIT Manipal, he joined TATA Motors as a management trainee in 1995.

Dr Reuben Samuel
WHO, New Delhi
Under the direct supervision of the Joint Secretary to the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Government of India, in-charge of the GFATM and the overall supervision of the World Health Organization – Representative to India, Dr Samuel facilitating the establishment and the management of the Secretariat for the GFATM Country Coordinating Mechanism (CCM) in India.

Shubhendu Parth
Associate Editor –
Dataquest, CyberMedia
India Ltd., Gurgaon
A journalist by profession, Shubhendu Parth has been a strong advocate of technology for masses and moved on from the mainline media, The Indian Express, in 2000 to join Dataquest in order to push the cause. Over his six year stint with the Cyber Media Group he went on to head the CyberMedia News, India’s only technology wire service to steering the magazine’s e-Gov initiative. He is also credited with conceptualizing the Dataquest regional e-Gov Summit and the Dataquest e-Gov Champion Awards.

Ravi Gulati
Director,
Manzil, New Delhi
Mr. Gulati is an educationist and free thinker. After his management course at IIM Ahmedabad, he intentionally decided to dedicate his life along with his family to serve the urban needy children in the field of education and training so that they do not lag behind students who have all the resources to avail the best facilities in a typical urban milieu. He runs an organisation called Manzil to achieve the above mentioned objectives.

Dr. V K Dharmadhikari
Scientist G & HOD,
Internal Coordination,
EGPMU, DIT
New Delhi
Scientist G & HOD, Internal Coordination, EGPMU, Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communication & Information Technology

Rajen Varada
Co-founder,
Technology for the People,
Hyderabad
Rajen is a Project Head for SSK at UNICEF Hyderabad and Founder of TFTP (Technology for the People). Rajen is the winner of Manthan Award 2005 as well as Winner of World Summit Award 2005 in the e-Health Category for the product called Sisu Samarakshak. He has just formed India’s first group of ICT for SHGs (Self Help Groups) in Kuppam, Andhra Pradesh

Mridula Chandra
Secretary, Health & Social
Development Research Centre, Jaipur
Ms Mridula Chandra is the Secretary, Health & Social Development Research Centre, Jaipur. She has a vast knowledge experiences in the social sector for over 20 years. A Masters in Social Work from Delhi School of Social Work, Ms Chandra has worked at the community level in the areas of health, HIV/AIDS, family planning and other grassroots areas. She is also a winner of Manthan Award 2005 in the e-Health category.

 

WSA & DEF Conducts Major e-Content Road Show in India

August 5, 2006, New Delhi: DEF along with WSA held a grand e-Content Road Show, in New Delhi, India. organized as “International Conference on e-Content and Sustainability” by WSA’s India partner Digital Empowerment Foundation, the event gathered more than 350 high profile e-content practitioners including many of the government bureaucrats from across the nation.

The highlight of the occasion was the national e-content award ceremony which is known and branded as Manthan Award. WSA’s Indian national e-content contest take place by the name of Manthan Award which is held every year under the patronage of DEF, WSA’s India partner.

The highlight of the roadshow was the showcasing of all the best practices of WSA 2005, and also the local winners of Indian subcontinent. Moreover, the WSA film was shown to all the audience, and DVDs were distributed among all and sundry. The WSA stall attracted major interest who wanted to know the international bet e-contents, and lots of queries of partnership were also raised.

On the other hand, the Manthan Award 2006, which can also be called The Indian WSA, is clearly a picture of hard work, diligence, quality and utility vis-à-vis the emerging e-Content atmosphere in the country, whose trace could be now found in our countryside as well. The winning and appreciation list is basket of creativity, sensibility, and sincerity in digging out innovations, a steely outcome of serious yet positive repercussion on the lives of the commoners courtesy Information Communication Technology. The products are vivacious, elements are threadbare and value is infinite if viewed from its creation to its usability phase in due course, may not be a instant tea/coffee item, just make it, drink and swallow it.

Since the year 2006 Manthan Award was sponsored by American India Foundation, the award was branded as Manthan-AIF Award.

The nominations and winning list is a myriad of a beautiful landscape of e-Content creators and their products cut across 250 total nominations; 14 categories; 32 winners; 5 special mentions, and 4 appreciations for community radio initiatives. Regional and cultural representations were equally vivid; 250 nominations from 24 States and Union Territories.

The nominations list: an interesting revelation across States and UTs. Maharashtra, Delhi and Uttaranchal topped the list with 52, 31 and 13 nominations while Nagaland, Pondicherry and Chandigarh had 1 nomination each while the rest interspersed in between. E-Governance, e-Inclusion and livelihood, e-learning, e-education, were the top notch ones while e-health, e-news, e-entertainment and few others were the laggards in filing nominations.

The Manthan-AIF Award 2006 equally reveals the platforms for e-Content innovations and their delivery. Offline; Web/ Internet; Broadband /online; CD/DVD; Mobile Content; Email; Video conference; LAN or WAN, local radio and Satellite broadcast; Audio video cable are the various technological solutions being utilized for e-Content practices and its distribution. Equally apparent were the cultural and linguistic emergence of e-Content products and services. If the Ananda Utsav site in e-Culture served its audiences in both English and Bengali language, the other picture is of Kannada Logo serving its customers and users in local Kannada language.

The Manthan-AIF 2006 witnessed the presence of technological and other dignitaries who have their presence felt in Information Communication Technology. Dr. R. A. Mashelkar, DG, CSIR; Mr. Wajahat Habibullah, Chief Information Commissioner, India; Prof. Anil Gupta, IIMA and National Innovation Foundation; Mr. Avdhash Kaushal, RLEK; Mr. Sachin Pilot, MP were among the distinguished guests whose presence in the Manthan-AIF Award 2006 added the much needed value and utility to the purpose.

The Manthan-AIF Award 2006 winners list is further interesting from quantitative perspective. E-Governance has got five winners, while e-education has four and e-Entertainment has only one winner. Surprisingly there are no winners in the e-Science category. State wise Maharashtra has the maximum winners of eleven in various categories. Kerala, Andhra Pradesh has one winner each while States like Assam, West Bengal have two winners each.

Initiating, operating and spearheading e-Content practices and popularizing it need not be a frustrating experience in India any longer. On the contrary there is a huge surface and edifice coming up and rapidly growing in the country including in the country side for ICT use and e-Content delivery just waiting to be explored and ploughed better for development and empowerment needs. The Manthan-AIF Award 2006 is a stark display of this emerging e-Content trend and increasing popularity whose appetite could be increasing by the day.

The Manthan-AIF Award is a first of its kind initiative in India to recognize the best practices in e-Content and Creativity. Launched in October 2004, by Digital Empowerment Foundation in partnership with World Summit Award, and the American India Foundation, the Manthan Award emphasizes the importance of e-Content & Creativity for and by the grassroots people and organisations. The Manthan Award 2005 recognized and awarded 27 initiatives out of 104 nominations received for 8 categories.

The mission behind Manthan-AIF Award is to create an information rich society where everyone, irrespective of caste, religion, race, region, gender etc., are empowered to create, receive, share and utilize information and knowledge for their economic, social, cultural and political upliftment and development.

The success of ICT does not stand on its own. Among several important components for any ICT intervention content formation and its utility assumes one of the core status. ICT delivery has to take into consideration the local needs of community, type and form of content for consumption and use, language of content and continuous value addition of content services and its delivery.

The Manthan-AIF Award is established to guide India through those best e-Contents from the country which stands out due to their excellence in carrying message and creating knowledge networks among local communities and the wider society. The e-Content practitioners are selected for their exemplary role and activities in empowering communities and groups through their ICT interventions in myriad ways.

The Manthan Award is an Indian initiative by Digital Empowerment Foundation, India as the national initiative of World Summit Award, to select and promote the best practices in e-Content and Creativity in India. It involves representatives from each state and union territory of India and visualizes the bridging of digital divide and narrowing of the content gap as its overall goal.

For Further Information please contact:

Maria Rizvi, Digital Empowerment Foundation

defindia@gmail.com; manthanaward@gmail.com