Weekly news roundup - Asia, September 1

Created By: vignesh on 1-Sep-2007 12:00 AM

Village resource centres to provide telemedicine faicility
Sir Ganga Ram Hospital (SGRH), New Delhi, has established three village resource centres. The centres are located in three different northern states of India, namely Gohana (Haryana), Kaithun (Rajasthan) and Dasmal (Himachal Pradesh). The centres aim to provide tertiary level health services at the doorstep of the poor in rural areas. Each centre is connected to SGRH, New Delhi through a satellite link for providing online consultation and medical diagnosis. In case further consultation is needed, patients are referred to SGRH, New Delhi where they do not have to pay any consultation fee to the specialist. The project follows a public-private partnership model, in which Indian Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Indian Space Research Organisation, Department of Science and Technology of Government of India and Sir Ganga Ram Hospital are active partners. SGRH is expected to provide health-care through telemedicine services to about 50,000 patients every year and direct medical services to about 3oo,ooo villagers at these centres.

e-Krishi: IT enabled agri business centres in Kerala, India
e-Krishi is a market-driven agricultural initiative that envisages facilitating and enabling farmers to sell their produce using the IT platform of Akshaya. The project is being implemented in Malappuram district through 341 Akshaya e-Kendras. e-Krishi has set up a toll-free call centre, which can be reached at 1800-425-1661 and 0471-2700965. More than 25,000 farmers and buyers have registered on the e-Krishi portal for selling and buying produce in Malappuram district. The project facilitates farmers and other stakeholders through agribusiness centres to interact with Agricultural Service Providers in the Private, Government and Non-Government sectors. Using the e-krishi platform, the Civil Supplies Corporation recently procured 68 tonnes of paddy from Ponnani taluk. This benefited 207 farmers Ponnani. The e-Krishi centre successfully showed that spiralling market prices could be checked during festivals. It also ensured a good deal for the farmers as well as for the consumers.

Indian government permits 12 community radio stations to come up in Karnataka
“Namma Banuli” - workshop organised to encourage community radio stations by the Department of Information, Government of Karnataka. Amita Prasad, Regional Commissioner, North Karnataka, Government of Karnataka, said, “Radio stations should become the voice of the people who do not have a voice. It should discuss the problems faced by the rural masses such as education, agriculture, women empowerment and infrastructure development.” She added that the community radio stations should share various success stories and the developmental programmes launched by the government and even it can guide the youngsters about employment avenues.” Speaking at the function, Abdul Rehman Pasha, Expert, Community Radio Stations, said “the Union Government has permitted to start 12 community radio stations in the state and more than 250 NGOs have applied to get the permission to start the stations. He said the community radio stations would cover a distance of five kilometres as the crow flies. Radio stations do not have specific timings and if an NGO wanted to run the station for 24 hours it is also welcome.”

Wireless Reach initiative to empower rural communities in Sri Lanka
Qualcomm, a leading equipment vendor has teamed up with a cadre of international business and government partners under its wireless reach initiative that aims to create a series of high-speed Internet centres to empower the rural communities in Sri Lanka.  The centres will carry the brand name of Easy Seva and are expected to provide unprecedented quality of service to the communities they serve. The goal of the Easy Seva centres is to develop entrepreneurs in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector in Sri Lanka by deploying 3G mobile broadband Internet service at the village level and enabling them to offer access to affordable ICT-enabled services and content. The centres are enabled with 3G mobile broadband connectivity based on Dialog's high-speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) network. They will employ an innovative franchise approach, which will aim to create a profitable and sustainable business model for extending ICT services and connectivity to rural consumers. According to Kanwalinder Singh, President, Qualcomm India and SAARC, “Dialog Telekom is the first operator in the SAARC region to launch HSDPA for rural applications”.

Inter-Ministerial group set up to roll out broadband infrastructure in rural India
The government has provided only 2.5 million broadband connections till the end of June this year, which is far less than the target of nine million for the year. However, the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology representatives say that several steps have been taken to speed up the process of providing broadband connections. An inter-ministerial group is working out the requirements of various user departments/ministries for planning the roll out of broadband infrastructure in rural areas with support from Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF). The group comprises of officials from Health, Home, Human Resource Development, Panchayati Raj and Information Technology ministries. The USOF is also implementing a scheme for supporting shared infrastructure for mobile services in rural and remote areas not covered by the wireless signal.

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