Bikes Bring Internet to Indian Villagers

[AndyTiedye]

BITHOOR, India - 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 India's most populous state, accompanied by a computer instructor who gives classes to young and old, students and teachers alike.

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The bicycle cart is the center 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 10 miles southwest of Bithoor, the project is funded by the national government and provides free computer classes in six villages here in Uttar Pradesh state.


http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=528&e=1&u=/ap/20040816/ap_on_hi_te/internet_rickshaw

[Nambe]

1. Dell and Gateway should do a little community service!

With all the money they make from outsourcing to India, they should supply computers and condoms.

[gottaB]

2. diagram, picture

diagram:

http://www.iitk.ac.in/MLAsia/infothela.htm

Small picture:

http://desitalk.newsindia-times.com/2004/01/16/news-gallery.html