Drishtee: The vision

Drishtee is another organization working with the government towards building rural Internet kiosks which will serve as not just Internet cafes, but much more. They defines a kiosk as a multi-point service delivery channel in a village. The kiosk operator will provide different kinds of services to villagers like computer education, insurance, digital photo studio, and the Internet-based services. The kiosk will be equipped with a computer, a digital camera, and a photo printer. ICICI bank is financing these kiosks. And if you read about the portable ATM machine made by the TeNeT group from IIT Madras, then all this makes much more sense. The activity is clearly on with even Microsoft and Intel being interested, and I hope all of this goes through well.

An excellent pointer from Raja Malapati's blog talks in detail about President Kalam's vision of knowledge centers in rural India led by Self-Help Groups (SHGs). It has mention of the role being played by Microsoft, the TeNeT group, and the M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation. Apparently, some funding also comes from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) of Canada. Over 1500 kiosks have already been set up and I am eager to know more about the level of success achieved.