Info-cart gets Indian villagers on Internet

For 12-year-old Anju Sharma, hope for a better life arrives in her poor farming village three days a week on a bicycle rickshaw that carries a computer with a high-speed, wireless Internet connection.

Designed like temple carriages that bear Hindu deities during festivals, the brightly painted pedal-cart rolls into her village in Uttar Pradesh, accompanied by a computer instructor who gives classes to young and old, students and teachers alike.

"By using computers, I can improve my knowledge," Sharma, whose parents plan to pull her out of school at 15, said in Hindi, before joining a class on Web cameras. "And that will help me get a job when I grow up." The bicycle cart is the centre of a project called 'Infothela,' or info-cart. It aims to use technology to improve education, health care and access to agricultural information in India's villages, where most of the country's 1.06 billion people live.

Conceived in 2003 by the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur, about 16 km southwest of Bithoor, the project is funded by the national government and provides free computer classes in six villages here in the northern state.

Another computer on a pedicab is being used in an experiment to help doctors in Lucknow, the state capital, provide consultation to villagers through video-conferencing in nearby Saroha village. A project to disseminate the latest crop prices and farming methods is also being developed.

In Bithoor, on the banks of the Ganges River, manual labour is the alternative to farming and annual incomes rarely exceed Rs6,000.

Sharma's teachers make only Rs 500 a month. Young people look for jobs in cities, but often lose out to better educated urbanites. "Computers and Internet open up new opportunities for these villagers," said Lalty Dutta, a project official.

The mobility of a cycle rickshaw, which is light enough to cross muddy, potholed roads, ensures that the same computer and Internet connection can be used by people in several neighbouring villages.

The Infothela cart has a specially designed frame and cushioning to protect the computer and accessories from the bumpy ride.

"The mobile platform is necessary to reduce cost of ownership because the resources are shared by a larger population. It is also necessary to push information to women and elderly people who can't travel outside their village," said Manoj Kumar, a project manager.

The service is free for now, but fees will eventually be charged, Kumar said.

A few kilometres from Bithoor, another cycle rickshaw carries its high-tech load to Gorahah village, where men and women gather side-by-side for a class on electronic mail. The mix is nothing short of a revolution in tradition-bound rural India, where women are often kept indoors.

The classes teach the basics of computing, word processing, spreadsheets, Internet browsing and Web cameras. Once they learn own to use a webcam the villagers can take part in online classes, something the info-cart organisers hope to implement later.