Some Ashoka Fellows from India working on ICT for development

A friend from Ashoka in India suggested the following Fellows as invitees to a conference on the use of ICT for development. I thought that I might as well post the information here. There are some ideas on ICTD projects as well.

Rabindranath, Assam: Link

Organization: Rural Volunteer Center -- Civil society model that helps people cope with frequent floods in the Bhramaputra.

Comments: Will bring insights about the problems faced by rural populations during flood season, and possible solutions. For example, what kind of rapidly-installable community radio stations and receivers be helpful to coordinate large groups of people during sudden flood situations?

Rahul Banerjee, Indore (MP): Link

Organization: Aarohi Trust -- Community building among tribals by reinforcing the local language and culture. Adopts different approaches, including community radio on the ICT side, along with written literature for books and magazines.

Comments: This is a very grassroots initiative. Will bring insights about the actual cultural processes in remote and marginalized communities, and how ICT interventions should take these factors into account.

Dipendra Manocha, Delhi: Link-1, Link-2

Organization: DAISY consortium: Develops standards and hardware/software for converting/synchronizing text and braille content into audio for visually impaired people.

Comments: Dipendra represents the DAISY consortium in India. He works on content creation in local languages, and development of a low-cost player. The work sounds very interesting from a research perspective, of coupling braille print with accompanying audio content.


Shanti Raghavan, Bangalore: Link

Organization: Enable India -- Trains physically disabled and visually impaired people in computer skills, and place them in jobs with IT companies.

Comments: They currently use commercial software for screen reading, which is quite expensive, and apparently very annoying to use for some applications. Will bring insights about various usability requirements for the blind, which could lead to interesting ideas for alternative techniques.

Pratima Joshi, Pune: Link

Organization: Shelter Associates -- Uses GIS to plot and query household data about slum dwellers for more efficient slum planning and development. Data is collected through surveys done by local slum dwellers.

Comments: They have much use for automation of data collection activities using OMR/ILR techniques, or by using PDAs. They may also help explain the exact use-case for a GIS interface on mobile devices.

Solomon Jayaprakash, Bangalore: Link-1, Link-2

Organization: LabourNet assists workers in the informal economy to search for employment in areas such as plumbing, tile-layering, painting, building construction, etc. A parallel program, Maya Organics, helps organize the informal artisan network into worker cooperatives for manufacture of toys, wooden furniture, garments, etc. LabourNet seems to be a reasonably sophisticated IT enabled initiative.

Comments: It will be interesting to know what kind of identity-verification and user-interface issues they run into, when working with people having poor educational backgrounds.

Rajiv Khandelwal, Udaipur: Link

Organization: Aajeevika Bureau -- Assists rural migrants to develop skills and find jobs in cities. Also maintains databases of migrant workers, which helps study migration patterns.

Comments: Will help gain knowledge of how they maintain photo-id cards of people, and what problems they face.

Lisa Heydlauff: Link-1, Link-2

Organization: Going to School -- Develops videos about how children in different parts of India go to school, and their diverse experiences and ambitions. Brings respect among kids for the diversity and vastness of Indian cultures.

Comments: Could be very interesting for other researchers working on education.