The Indian Info-Rickshaws 205
DoomDoom writes "CNN is running a story
on how the Indian government is delivering health and educational services on a WiFi equipped rickshaw to the poorest of its citizens. It's a poetical union of a typical third world product with high-tech! Do you still think computing is unnecssary for the poorest of the poor?"
Hard Life (Score:5, Insightful)
"By using computers, I can improve my knowledge," Sharma, whose parents plan to pull her out of school at 15
Ouch. I complain that I only was able to go to a technical school [putting myself through college now]; at least I got to finish out high school.
It amazes me everytime I read about how hard so many people have it, then I look around and see these hideously overweight people driving SUVs, tossing out food, with a ridiculous sense of entitlement (e.g. "society owes me because I'm special") to that effect.
I wonder if more of us in America will ever wake up and realize how good we have it? Yes, of course, the wealth/technology/etc we have introduces its own set of problems, (e.g. SCO, Microsoft, obeisty, ...) but I'd rather
deal with that anyday than lack of education or starvation.
effectiveness? (Score:4, Insightful)
How is this really effective?
With a single rickshaw, even with decent class organization, how are these skills going to help people get better jobs or do their work better? Especially when they are barely completing junior high school years?
While it is a nice way to spread tech around, I dont see how it makes life better for people than the same amount of money in other educational things (books, teachers, that much money goes a long way).
broadband+cheap computing might be vital for us (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to build community here in America, where mass media has supplanted our face to face community, cheap wireless broadband might be vital. Otherwise, you get a hollow corporate teevee community, which pushed hollow corporate consumer values into children's heads. When Americans get online, they can rebuild that community. Cheap computers and broadband are needed in order to distribute video entertainment, which need not be produced by large corporations.
Re:Hard Life (Score:1, Insightful)
It's called Capitalism and a free market, and it's sharma's best chance of getting out of poverty. The person driving the SUV made money for some car company that has probably outsourced some of it's IT work to India.
I wonder if more of us in America will ever wake up and realize how good we have it?
If the American consumer stops consuming, there will be a more poorer people in the third world, not less. You may not like IT outsourcing to India or the outsourcing of manufacturing to China, but it's the best chance the poor people in those countries have of coming out of poverty. And that only happens because American consumers are allowed to exercise their free will and buy the products they want.
It never ceases to amaze me: The poor countries are turning to capitalism to give their people the best chance at getting out of poverty. The United States is a source of inspiration...yet the people who live here can't appreciate that simple fact. It takes people who've seen both sides to realize this.
Re:Hard Life (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:effectiveness? (Score:4, Insightful)
Are they really trying? (Score:4, Insightful)
Probably every single one of you reading this post has spent more time in front of your computer today than these people will, at a rickshaw, in a month. And the Indian government wants to "... use technology to improve education, health care and access to agricultural information in India's villages ..."? If they were serious about that they'd create a tiny computer center in each village and instead of sending rickshaws around, send teachers instead.
Re:I could care less about poor people in India (Score:5, Insightful)
Secondly:
You're absolutely correct. It is just you. If you're not interested in the article just because it's not about something more interesting (like Scott Peterson's latest hairstyle or the outcome of the six-hour finale of 'Who'll hook up with the mad axe murderer?') then I respectfully suggest that you move along. The majority of people onRe:broadband+cheap computing might be vital for us (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:effectiveness? (Score:4, Insightful)
In the same way as every open door - put yourself in their position and think about it...
Poorest of the poor (Score:1, Insightful)
I asked. They'd like some housing, food, maybe some clothes and some medical help first. But thanks for asking!
Re:cost (Score:5, Insightful)
It costs that much because you have to have enough money to pay for the lawyers you employ to go after people that speak out against your product.
Re:Hard Life (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:effectiveness? (Score:2, Insightful)
What about, say, *vaccines*? (Score:5, Insightful)
As to who thinks there are better places to put resources, none other than Bill and Melinda Gates [gatesfoundation.org] think so. Two of the high profile efforts are and AIDS vaccine [rubella.net] and TB efforts [healthylivingeating.com], although there's plenty more fronts they're throwing financing at.
I remember an interview with him (can't find it online) where he recalled being at a meeting with dozens of people pitching high tech solutions to Third World problems and him rejecting almost all of them in favor of vaccines. He said it was silly to start laying down fiber optic cable (this was a few years before WiFi) in an area where you couldn't draw clean water from a well.
Now, don't get me wrong. Any effort that conveys health information or basic education to people who need it is, by definition, a Good Thing (TM). Also, this is an indigenous effort of Indians (presumably the Indian government) helping their own, not someone outside trying to find the best place to spend their money. One would assume (and the photos of healthy people in TFA certainly imply) they've already got their vaccination, clean water, and hunger plans already in place, so they might as well experiment with alternate education efforts.
Still, I have to wonder about the long term viability of this project. With India's struggling masses, you have to wonder if the money might be better spent elsewhere.
Re:Poor people could care less (Score:4, Insightful)
When oh when will the /. crew get it into their heads that the rest of the world is not living in filth, squalor and poverty? They have a middle class in India too you know! Jeez! I mean, which is it? Are the Indians robbing us of our god-given, high-skill programming jobs or are they living in mud-huts and unable to read or write? Make up your minds!
Re:Poorest of the poor (Score:2, Insightful)
Liar.
Most poor in the 3d world are, and have been, scraping by with barely enough housing, food, clothing and medical for generations. They're quite familiar with how to get by that way, thank you very much.
The ones that aren't stupid, which is remarkably many of them, know that the only way out of this multi-generational rut is by learning a skilled trade.
It sounds like the bulk of the 3d world poor are some kind of whiny welfare cases. They're not. They're just born into grinding poverty and are all willing to work hard as hell to get out of it, if they were only given an opportunity.
Facetime with a computer is an opportunity. Even if it just means you can say you can wield a mouse and type Word documents, that's a stunning chance for doing better than shovelling shit from one place to another like your illiterate father and grandfather did.
Re:Hard Life (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What about, say, *vaccines*? (Score:2, Insightful)
That's all well and good, but we're not talking about drawing fiber between villages.
We're talking about simply dragging some ancient PC around from village to village so that people get to experience it.
You can be sure that in every village, there will be some 10-year old kid who will get absolutely mesmorized by it and decide that that's what he wants to do instead ekeing out a life from subsistence farming.
Look, this isn't exactly a high-cost project. If you want to complain about something, complain about Indias Nuclear Arms program instead and leave the PC-in-a-rickshaw guys alone!
Re:effectiveness? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What about, say, *vaccines*? (Score:3, Insightful)
Good point, although I want to make sure you understand I do not object to the Infothela effort. It's well worth throwing some money around and try new things, especially in areas that have all the basics (water, vaccines, etc) already handled. As I said, I'm a little dubious about the long term prospects for this, but it's great that someone's at least trying. After all, if you wait until everyone in the world has all their substience problems solved before spending anything on education or other "higher level" efforts, you'll never get around to it. (Didn't Jesus say "The poor will always be amongst you"?)
On the other hand, I want to make sure us technophiles don't lose sight of what this project does: provide higher level needs to people who, while they will make good use of it, are not starving or dying for it. It's wonderful that the Indian government is supporting this, but I for one make sure the bulk of my charity dollars go to places where they'll be even more effective.
Re:What about, say, *vaccines*? (Score:2, Insightful)
I have to wonder about the long term viability of this project. With India's struggling masses, you have to wonder if the money might be better spent elsewhere.
With equal access to education, maybe they could learn to do a lot more stuff for themselves. Perhaps they could learn enough to be able to contribute something valuable to society, and then have the ability to buy vaccines on their own.
This same defense against providing equal access to educational resources always comes up in these discussions: "These people don't need access to education, they just need to survive!". It's a deceptive, emotionally-charged argument -- the equivalent of "But think of the children!" -- and it can be succinctly refuted with the adage: "Give a man a fish, feed him for a day; teach him how to fish, feed him for a lifetime."
No real surprise, incidently, that Bill Gates wants to give them fish instead of teaching them to fish for themselves. Megacorps and the uber-rich don't get to where they are with without plenty of people to exploit along the way...
Re:Slashdot parody (Score:3, Insightful)
Many Americans have this insane fear certain types of jobs going to third-world countries will lead to a tidal wave that will suck away all our jobs and leave us behind. History shows us that this is not the case. Instead, those jobs go away to make room in our economy for new jobs. We get better jobs, they get better jobs, everyone benefits. Those who are fighting to keep the status quo (like the anonymous poster who replied to you) are working against themselves. The Soviet Union should give us ample illustration of why such an attitude is self-defeating. The soviet central planners tried to enforce the status quo. It worked for awhile, but eventually the rest of the world left them behind, and Soviet workers were stuck doing busy-work that was no longer relevent.
Re:cost (Score:3, Insightful)
Probably, but because richer economies have to produce more robust products to even be considered for funding. If these rickshaws hit the US market, people like you would be complaining how terrible they are, how the range sucks, how painfully heavy they are, how big of flop they will be, etc.
Also, look at these things, those are full sized PCs in there, not laptops. In an economy where people make ~16k per head per year, who is going to drag around a rickshaw PC? At the very least the more expensive project you decry would be a lighter more energy efficient laptop or even four or five of them for multiple use per rickshaw.
Its real easy just to say "westerners suck, they are so spoiled, fat, and lazy compared to everyone else" when really all people behave the same way given the same circumstances. People in rich economies tend to get fat. People in poor economies tend to be too thin. People in rich economies shift to service industries. People in poor economies work in manufacturing. Products in richer economies are disposable. Products in poorer economies tend to be servicable. And so on.
The US and UK has no shortage of amazing projects when they were at a poorer point in their history. Hell, look at the US's advances in telegraph, rail, and telephone systems back when. Or the power and opportunity the steam engine and the cotton gin produced.
I really get sick of the western bashing and the whole "we've lost out way, lets get back to nature" BS. Disposable laptops, wifi everywhere, etc are signs of progress. Maybe you'd rather be waiting 6 weeks for a replacement power supply on the family 286, but not me.
The only real catch is smart disposal as to not affect the environment. Even poor economies have to work on not letting excess fertilizer get in the ground water or let their farming habits encourage erosion.
Re:Waste (Score:2, Insightful)
Instead by providing a means to allow the people to educate themselves, they and their peers will be able to improve their own situation and thus have a stake in continuing to improve. With the exception of _real_ need handouts do not ultimatly improve a persons, much less a nations future.
Btw I think this from world fact book is relevant:
Educating these people (and thus providing a means) about their own environment will do much more than you give credit to helping those destitute.
Token Effort (Score:3, Insightful)
Rumor has it that this project only ever sent and received a handful of emails before everyone lost interest.
It turned out that internet is pretty irrelevant to the locals. The only people who got anything out of it were the aid workers who got covered on CNN.
An email connection that is only available once a week at best when the rickshaw comes round is not much value to anyone, especially if you dont know anyone else who has an email address. Teaching spreadsheets and MS Word is not much value in a community which has no computers the rest of the week. If you are reliant on subsistence agriculture like I suspect most of these villages are, you are likely more worried about digging your fields by hand than calculating crop yields. Telemedicine is all very well but irrelevant if you cant afford the drugs or surgery required. There is very little internet content relevant to a rural farmer. Any grand talk of eGovernment are pointless if your local government is not on line.
The best you can hope for is a couple of kids get a glimpse of the outside world and get the ambition and drive to get out and make something of themselves.
The people who set up these projects on the other hand get to pat each other on the back, fly off to nice conferences in expensive hotels where they tell each other about how valuable their work is, and of course appear on CNN.
In my experience as soon as there is a community has a purpose for an internet connection, the free market kicks in and internet cafes spring up like mushrooms. As any traveler will tell you most moderately prosperous 3rd world towns are full of internet cafes full of local kids IMing each other.
A better use of government time would be laying copper (or even fiber) to these villages so they could start with a phone connection, and then use government policy to keep internet connection costs down.
A better use of our resources would be to stop subsidizing our farmers so that the 3rd world poor can compete fairly and work themselves out of poverty.
It makes a big difference (Score:3, Insightful)
Secondly, being an Indian, I can tell you this (and similar technology related efforts) make a big difference. In a lot of different ways. While these projects may or may not fulfill their key goal (whatever this may be), what it does provide is a sense of confidence to the people. A feeling of being cared for by the government. A sense of being looked after. And then, all such gadgets/advancements still generate a sense of wonder in the people. There is a sense of novelty associated to such devices/initiatives.
The point I'm trying to convey is, in the more developed world, such devices or initiatives happen far too often (and maybe even at a faster pace). For a big, poor country, that broke out of the shackles not too long ago (we have been independent only 60 years now), such initiatives bring about lot of self belief and confidence.