Originally published May 28 2005
Via Technologies' donated PCs helping to address poverty problem in India
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
The India-based Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, an organization that develops supercomputers, has launched a pilot program designed to combat the terrible poverty found throughout India, according to Professor Jitendra Shah, the program's founder. The program, with its first installation in a village near Mumbai, allows students to use donated PCs to do geometry homework, while the local women use a micropayment program to track their savings.College teachers from throughout India will take a three-week training course in May that will enable them to replicate the program in other parts of the country. The donated PCs run on car and truck batteries to save power, though even that puts a strain on the public electrical power system.
Bringing the benefits of computer technology to rural villages in India will require a substantial amount of work--and a lot of extra car batteries, said professor Jitendra Shah.
Shah--who works in the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, an organization that develops supercomputers here--has launched a computer program designed to alleviate the grinding poverty found throughout the country.
In a pilot installation in a village near Mumbai, students use PCs, donated by Via Technologies, to perform geometry homework, while local women track their savings in a micropayment program.
To save power, the PCs run on car and truck batteries.
Unfortunately, the batteries regularly need recharging and the public electrical power system can't always handle the demand.
Three weeks ago, the village transformer blew because too many people tapped into it illegally, a chronic problem here.
The government refused to rebuild the transformer until the villagers promised to punish anyone who stole power.
Other projects in India include an automatic teller machine that can also serve as an Internet kiosk.
Because of the construction, farming in the village has disappeared and with it most of the employment.
The project also bisected the road to the school, so it has become impractical for most children here to attend on a regular basis, Shah said.
Right now, there is no Internet connection, but cellular service, which costs about $4 a month, could help solve that problem.
The goal right now is to design a box that will cost 10,000 rupees, or close to $200 with a monitor.
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