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DELHI DIARY: Dgroups, 100 channels, education...
Dgroups? What's that?
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Friends at Oneworld.net introduced us to this concept. It's a platform to
launch electronic mailing-lists related to development. For someone who
has long believed that mailing-lists are very appropriate for the
bandwidth-poor, communication-scarce Third World, this could be a
promising development.
Recently we were told that seven international organisations have jointly
launched Dgroups, an online community platform for groups working in
development and human rights around the world.
Designed for low bandwidth users in the Third World, its sponsors and
promoters say this will host mailing-list based discussions "supported by an
accessible, simple Website with discussion archives, and where members can
share personal profiles, events, links, and documents of interest with the
group".
Bellanet, DFID, ICA, IICD, OneWorld, UNAIDS and UNECA are behind this
initiative.
Will it work? Can it build up critical mass fast enough? Can it try to be as
responsive and speedy, without any red-tape in its functioning, as its
commercially-driven counterpart yahoogroups.com (whom one friend calls the
Microsoft of the webworld... and that, make no mistake, is meant to be no
compliment.)
Time will tell.
Nitya Jacob has anyway long been chiding me for not showing up at Delhi.
Nearly 2000 kms away (by road/rail) from Goa, it nearly takes 36 hours or
more to get there. One way. If you prefer to to avoid jet-setting, that
leaves you with few options. In contrast, Bangalore, Mumbai, Hyderabad,
Pune, or even Kerala, Chennai and Pondicherry is just an overnight's bus
ride away.
But this time, the topic was tempting: mailing lists!
This diarist has been stuck with mailing lists since 1994. Stuck? One
really can't complain. If this isn't appropriate technology for the Third
World, what is? It fits in very nicely for anyone with a priority of
sharing ideas and information. More so, if you get involved with
communities of interest that fit your own pet peeves.
So leaving aside our reluctance, fly down we did. Our hurricane visit to
the national capital, for a change, this time had an ICT4D edge to it.
100 channels
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That's how many were visible on the idiot-box at our modest (but
comfortable) hotel in Delhi. Most looking boringly like each other. Many
tuned to the crass consumerism of the Indian middle classes. And the news
channels giving a Delhi-centric vision of India, that fails to see so much
of what is really happening.
The Gyan Vani (educational TV) channel seemed promising. Until you turn it
on, that is. The content is abtruse and, in a country of a thousand
million plus, couldn't possibly interest more than a few thousand. That's
if they are actually watching!
One felt like a semi-illiterate watching IIT professors talk about complex
theoretical Internet issues. And we thought these channels were meant to
educate the citizen. Or were we just watching the wrong slot?
Education, et al
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If we can't make ICT4D work in the field of education, then we won't be
able to make it work anywhere else.
Geeta Sharma, OneWorld's education editor, is based in Delhi. To readers
of our education-india@indialists.org mailing lists (and a thousand others
on *her* mailing list), she's the educator of educators. Each week, or
roughly so, she puts out updates giving links to education news and
initiatives across the globe. Particularly the Third World.
There's so much to be done in this field. Education is perhaps one sector
where awareness of the solution could itself be a solution. Knowledge
itself is liberating. Just imagine what would happen if the productive
potential of millions of schoolteachers across the Third World could be
unleashed.
Meeting up with others was interesting. The Internet, or should we say
email and mailing lists, has shrunk distances in a vast sub-continent
sized country like India. We often know groups working 2000 kms away,
whether it is Jiva, NAFRE (campaigning for education as a basic right),
i4d (the first initiative at having a print-based ICT4D mag), the Digital
Opportunities channel run by Kanti Kumar and Development Alternatives.
We all got to exchange notes, learn more about each other's work, and get
to know each other on the personal level too. What was particularly
interesting was grappling with how the ICT4D issue can be extended further
to fields like GIS. More about that later...
FN
(The author is co-founder of BytesForAll, and is interested in
understanding how South Asians are harnessing IT for development,
learning more about the potential of Free Software and utilising the
communition potential of the Net for finding solutions to the trying
lives of the average citizen of the Third World)
--
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Frederick Noronha (FN) | http://www.fredericknoronha.net
Freelance Journalist | http://www.bytesforall.org
http://goalinks.pitas.com | http://joingoanet.shorturl.com
http://linuxinindia.pitas.com | http://www.livejournal.com/users/goalinks
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