An Indian call centre that works
A simple tin box - the purest, simplest version of the web available - has transformed the lives of villagers in rural India. Peter Lyle reports
Last November, as she listened to a conference speaker outline his vision of a future in which public-private partnerships would build thousands of sophisticated internet centres connecting remote villages to a high-speed lifestyle where they could pull up local maps on their Java-equipped mobile phones, Rose Shuman came back to a question she had been grappling with for some time.
Given all the clever people who worked in information technology, and all the enthusiasm they had for its potential to empower ordinary citizens, why didn’t more of them come up with ways of taking computers to the people that didn’t require millions of dollars, miles of cable and man-hours to realise?
It wasn’t an idle inquiry. That same month, in the Indian village of Ethida, several hours’ drive from New Delhi, the second Question Box came into being.