Over 125 heritage enthusiasts trace ‘Dilli ki Tehzeeb’ with the eHeritage Project It was early Sunday morning (8 am on October 18, 2015) and Team DEF was waiting at Chawri Bazaar Metro Station Gate No. 3 for an expected crowd of about 50-60 participants to arrive and register for a walk organised by the eHeritage…
Is digital inclusion dividing rather than connecting people? Are efforts such as the National Digital Literacy Mission (NDLM) and Common Services Centre (CSC) schemes making people’s lives more convenient or just miserable? With Digital India, are we trying to achieve efficiency, less bureaucracy and more transparency or are we creating another barrier to cross, …
An early autumn morning and I was shaken up by my mobile alarm. The most, annoying alarm in the world. I had to get out of my bed, the only way to make it stop ringing, as I left it on television set last night. It took me a while to realize that I was…
52 Parindey is a project dedicated to finding and identifying 52 innovators who are making a conscious living for themselves and their planet through alternate careers in Indian towns. Under this project, starting end of November, a fellow, Rahul Karanpuriya, will travel across the country to cover 52 locations and spend a week at each…
Sambhaavnaa Institute of Public Policy and Politics organised in September a three-day workshop, Tana Bana, for the weaver communities of India and those individuals or organisations that are working with the weavers and for the weavers. The workshop saw participation of almost 40 people from across the country and from different walks of life to…
To label the mobile phone as revolutionary would be an understatement. It has transformed lives like never before, especially for the people at the bottom of the pyramid for whom information was a scarce commodity. Never more is this transformation more evident than in South East Asia, where the mobile has allowed services to be delivered to the 1.5 billion people in the region, many of whom couldn’t be reached through traditional means.
Amid all the negativity about the roles and responsibilities of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), mostly from the government and in many cases the business sector, one fact that nobody can take away from the non-profits is that theirs is perhaps the only voice shouting out loud when there are matters of concern, causes that need attention, and issues that affect civil society.
Last month, a team from DEF visited Attabira and Barpali in Bargarh district, and Nuapatna in Cuttack district of Odisha to access the socio-economic condition of weavers. And we were particularly impressed by the weavers of Nuapatna.about 70 kilometres away from the state Capital of Bhubaneswar, actually experiment with patterns, and are more meticulous and traditional in their process of extracting thread, spinning yarn ….
The first e-Naga Summit was organised on May 27, 2015, in Kohima, Nagaland. The Internet is directly connected to the economy of the state and country. It is opening new doors by way of revolutionising access to information and knowledge. And awareness is enabling re-orientation in the thinking process. Hence, aspirations of the youth are changing in Nagaland but there are many hurdles that are restricting the way forward.
This article was first published in the Mint newspaper on August 17, 2015. How do you design a developmental solution or provide a digital tool for a poor and inaccessible area where visitors are tracked by Maoists? An area so remote that barely any telecom network works, where more than 90% of the population lives…
