Click to play videoNew Delhi: Say digital and you think of hi-tech gadgetry or hotshot engineers. But can digital technology change rural lives? An award ceremony in Delhi on Monday threw up some surprising examples.
The Manthan Awards is a forum to honour other such organisations who have used technology to transform rural lives.
Mohan, a Rajasthani villager shot the entire ceremony. Mohan hasn't studied beyond Class 5. Yet an NGO called Barefoot College changed his life by teaching him to wield the camera.
“We have 400 nominations, across 15 categories where 20 jurists were involved. We selected 39 awardees,” said Osama Manzar of the Digital Empowerment Foundation.
Now in its fourth year, the Manthan Awards are held annually by the Digital Empowerment Foundation - a linking body for almost 1,000 organisations who use technology for e-governance, education and livelihood change among rural masses.
This years results churned up some surprising winners.
“We are Desi Crew. We are a rural BPO that focuses on training rural youth to cater to foreign clients. In this way we are making them on par with their urban cousins,” said Saloni of Digital Crew.
Peeyush Bajpai of Raftaar.com said, “We are a Hindi search engine addressing the need of 350 million Hindi speakers. We estimate close to10 million pages of Hindi content are there.”
So while India claims to be an information superpower, more than half our countrymen have never seen a computer. The Manthan Awards are trying to change that by encouraging innovative use of technology to touch rural lives.
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