Technology can fix India's problems

I've been following India and Southeast Asia more closely after the Mumbai Attack. India with its big population has both great possibilities in the future, but at the same time, there are huge social and internal security problems that have to be addressed properly and fixed. Below is a short story about one possible problem solver.

I borrowed his picture from Wikipedia. There is also some background information about "the problem solver" copy pasted from Wikipedia.

Technology can fix India's problems, says Mr. Nandan Nilekani in an IPTV interview for IBNLIVE webcast television.

The entrepreneur Nandan Nileakni has authored a book Imaging India. He is painting a dream for the dream of the future. He wants to be problem solver.

Nandan Nilekani (Kannada: ನಂದನ ನಿಲೇಕಣಿ ) is an Indian software entrepreneur. He is currently the Co-Chairman of Infosys Technologies Ltd, of which he is also a co-founder, along with N. R. Narayana Murthy and others.

End-users are pushing change at the grass-roots level.

• environmental
• healthcare
• social development
• India's growth and development
  

Wikipedia tells, Nilekani is a co-founder of India's National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM). He is also the chairperson of the Bangalore Agenda Task Force (BATF). His book, Imagining India: Ideas for the New Century was launched on November 24, 2008.

In the book, Nandan discusses a host of ideas ranging from the impact ideas such as democracy, globalization and demography have had on India's growth and development, to its slow progress in the areas of infrastructure and the provision of primary education to all, to the ideological deadlock when it comes to politics, higher education and labor reforms.

He also addresses a few ideas that are vital to cementing India's position as a global power - that of its social security provisions, its policies on clean energy and the environment, as well as its ability to deal with lifestyle-related diseases and ailments.

PS: It is good to have a global audience. A kind person from Edelman told me to correct a spelling error in my blog's right side column. There were more and might be more.

What we talked about:

• Guest has joined.
• Guest: Multi-channel is misspelt on your blog-right side panel - "This channels experiments with online multihcannel communication models. - Helge V. Keitel"
• me: thanks
• Guest: puneet.khunger (at) edelman (dot) com
• me: thanks, i will correct it
• Guest: I was just reading a blog on Nandan Nilekani - IPTV
• me: ok, I did see the iptv
• Guest: since we work with UTStarcom, which is leader in IPTV in India
• me: ok, do you have a blog, I could write a post. India is interesting or a website
• Sent at 11:31 AM on Friday
• Guest has left.
• me: I fixed it, thanks
• [GoogleTalk] says, You are chatting with an unidentified user. Be careful what you discuss.
• me: No problem, I'm grateful for the comments, have a nice weekend!
  

Reuters AlertNet - Twitter in Mumbai

The value of Twitter in the #Mumbai Terrorist Attack Reporting channel is scrutinized by Andrew Stroehlein. The tweets didn't, in his opinion, add with any substantial news. His critic is well founded from a news reporting and journalistic standpoint. Tweeters aren't professional journalists. But should we think about this as a conversational and therapeutic process that starts at the very beginning of an incident. There are of course also security concerns when tweets are disclosing things that "other side" can use for evil purposes. Tweets can also be used to deliver hatered and false information. The crowd doesn't act as a controlled, organized, well organized community. The crowd expresses feelings and sentiments. Traditional media focuses on "facts" and what is considered as "objective" information.

Reuters AlertNet - Twitter in Mumbai: "Written by: Andrew Stroehlein | Reuters and AlertNet are not responsible for the content of this article or for any external internet sites. The views expressed are the author's alone.

I will try to make this blog entry 140 characters long, since that is the longest possible message on Twitter, which some are raving about as a source of news during the Mumbai attacks. I'm not exactly convinced. And I'm already over 140 characters.

As someone who has previously equated 'citizen journalism' with 'citizen dentistry' Twitter heads were obviously going to have a hard time convincing me. There have been a few interesting articles trying to make the case with the attacks in Mumbai, however, including one from Mathew Ingram, who boldly claims 'Yes, Twitter is a source of journalism'.

Reuters also has had a good piece on 'citizen journalism' in the Mumbai case, as does France 24, CNN and others.

I remain sceptical, however. Looking through the Twitter search stream for 'Mumbai', I see so much useless information, I quickly get the feeling I am wasting my time. There are some personal notes -- very welcome no doubt if you have family or friends caught up in the madness and would like to know if they're OK, but it's not information that offers anything anyone can act upon..."

Amid Chaos, Citizens Spread Word on Web - WSJ.com

I've been following #Mumbai Twitter online. The terror has taken a new dimension. The question is, how can an open society build a defense line? Think about 40 determined people causing such a tremendeous damage. Mumbai (Bombay) is one world's largest cities. Those 40 men were able to take hostage of the whole city. Twitter has been one of the tools spreading word around the globe. Much will be talked about the accuracy of reporting.

Amid Chaos, Citizens Spread Word on Web - WSJ.com: "The Mumbai attacks have unleashed a storm of live updates from residents, swelling traffic and content on sites such as Twitter and Yahoo Inc.'s photo Web site Flickr. A Googlemap on the attack sites was swiftly put up. A lengthy entry about the attacks on user-generated online encyclopedia Wikipedia surfaced in less than an hour.

The interactivity demonstrates how Asia's technologically sophisticated populations are becoming citizen journalists and increasingly being the first sources of information on disasters like the Mumbai attacks and China's earthquake earlier this year, often outpacing traditional media outlets.

Experts say the late adoption but rapid spread of Internet and cellphone usage has made people in India and China quicker to embrace these new technologies. Compared with the U.S., 'the cellphone system and SMS culture is stronger in Asia,' said Sree Sreenivasan, a new-media professor at Columbia University.

Sites such as San Fancisco-based Twitter Inc.'s are 'one more step in the evolution,' of news-gathering, he said. He notes that bloggers played a prominent role in disseminating information during the 2004 Asian tsunami, as well as the heavy use of text-messaging during the 2006 Mumbai train blasts."

FOXNews.com - Indian Outsourcing Firms Hit Hard by Internet Outage - Science News | Science & Technology | Technology News

FOXNews.com - Indian Outsourcing Firms Hit Hard by Internet Outage - Science News | Science & Technology | Technology News: "NEW DELHI — India's lucrative outsourcing industry struggled Thursday to overcome Internet slowdowns and outages after cuts in two undersea cables sliced the country's bandwidth in half.

The disruption — which has hit a swath of users from Egypt to Bangladesh — began to affect much of the Middle East on Wednesday, when outages caused a slowdown in traffic on Dubai's stock exchange.

Such large-scale disruptions are rare but not unknown. East Asia suffered nearly two months of outages and slow service after an earthquake damaged undersea cables near Taiwan in December 2006.

The cables, which lie off the coast of Egypt in the Mediterranean, were snapped as the working day was ending in India on Wednesday and the impact was not immediately apparent.

But by Thursday, the Internet was sluggish across the country with some users unable to connect at all and others frustrated by spotty service. The Internet Service Providers' Association of India said the country had lost half its bandwidth."

China and India's Top Tech Companies - BusinessWeek

China and India's Top Tech Companies - BusinessWeek: "Nobody Bigger China Mobile: No. 10 There's no stopping China Mobile (CHL), the top cellular operator in China. The state-owned carrier has some 340 million customers.

In other words, China Mobile has more subscribers than the U.S. has people. The company plans to launch new services, such as song downloads, to keep those users happy. Investors are certainly smiling: China Mobile's stock price is up 50% this year."

Growing Middle Class in India

Increased purchasing power (Read more>)

Much of west and south India will turn middle class by 2020, but the backward states like Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Orissa won't get there before 2040. Disparities are obviously bad, but vigorous migration helps to ameliorate them and creates pressure on the backward states to catch-up.

Big changes will happen during the coming 13 years.

At these milestones, based on the same growth assumptions I listed above, India's individual purchasing power will climb from $2,149 in 1999 to $5,653 per person in 2020 — and to $16,500 in 2040.

That's a huge increase in purchasing power.