The Ford Foundation has made a grant to LIRNEasia for facilitating and enriching policy discourse in India on increasing broadband access by the poor. The work will cover documentation and archiving of key texts from India and elsewhere, the conduct of several short courses to improve the ability of civil society groups to participate in the policy discourse and the holding of expert fora that will bring together decision makers and stakeholders. The project commences this month and goes on for two years.
Yesterday, the Indian Cabinet approved the National Telecom Policy, with five changes. I really would like to comment on it (and see if any of our suggested changes were incorporated) but at this point the Department of Telecom site says nothing. So all we have are news reports.
The Indian Journal of Law and Technology in association with the Centre for Internet and Society (IJLT-CIS) , Bangalore is organising the 3rd IJLT-CIS Lecture Series at the National Law School of India University, Bangalore. The lecture series will be spread out over the course of the year and will include eminent speakers who will talk with the students and other interested persons on their topics of expertise. Rohan Samarajiva, Chair and CEO of LIRNEasia will deliver the inaugural lecture on Tariff Regulation in South Asia. Tariff regulation has in the recent past attracted the attention of both the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India as well as the Telecom Dispute Settlement Appellate Tribunal, as well as the Department of Telecom at the Union Ministry of Communications. India has a burgeoning and competitive cellular services provider market, and tariff regulation has far-reaching impact on this industry.
LIRNEasia has been working on making agriculture markets more efficient since 2007. Here, in a discussion of decelerating growth in India, is a justification for our focus and our intention to do more work in agriculture. Agriculture employs about half of India’s work force, for example, yet the agricultural revolution that flourished in the 1970s has slowed. Crop yields remain stubbornly low, transport and water infrastructure is poor, and the legal system is hostile to foreign investment in basic agriculture and to modern agribusiness. Note that the earlier general growth bursts of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan were all preceded by significant gains in agricultural productivity.
This is what we might use if we were to have a tagline. We’ve been using it since our launch in 2004. But now it seems that MIT Poverty Lab research shows that hope in the heart leads to money in the pocket. Nice summary by the Economist. The results were far more dramatic.
First reports of the Indian census are coming in. Communication: A telephone, whether a land line or mobile, is used by 63 percent of total households – 82 percent in urban areas and 54 percent in rural areas, an increase of 54 percentage points from 2001. A mobile phone is owned by 59 percent of households. There has been a huge jump in television ownership – up from 15.6 percent to 43 percent in since 2001.
The second of the videos features Rann Vijay Kumar, an agricultural first handler from Samasthipur in Bihar, India. He regularly buys vegetables and cereals directly from farmers, which he then stores and sells to wholesalers. He relies heavily on his mobile phone: to stay in touch with both his supplier farmers and buyers, and to know the latest market prices. Prior to using a mobiles, he used public phones, or passed messages around. Today, he travels less and talks more.
In keeping with the objectives of the Teleuse@BOP4 study, a series of videos have been completed. The focus is predominantly on the productive use of mobile phones. The first in this series features Poonam Devi, a beautician from Bihar, India. Poonam’s life has been transformed since she started using a mobile phone in 2007. It helped her to develop a small business as a beautician.
This was the question that was addressed at a plenary session at the APNIC conference in New Delhi today. The debate that centers on the role and function of multi-stakeholders, not limited to governments alone, was conducted by a panel representing multiple stakeholders, including Hon Hasanul Haq Inu, Chair of the Standing Committee on post and telecom of the Bangladesh Parliament, Mr N. Ravi Shanker, Administrator of the Indian Government’s Universal Service Fund, Mr Paul Wilson, Director General of APNIC, and Raman Jit Singh Chima of Google India. I chaired the session. The Indian government wants the current Internet Governance Forum to be beefed up so that it will actually produce decisions.
We took the description of this conference, Regional ITS [International Telecom Society] conference, seriously. I served on the program committee. Despite one visa casualty and one last minute cancellation, with five people attending, we had perhaps the largest organizational presence. But it was focused almost entirely on India and India’s many telecom problems. Of all the countries in South Asia, only Sri Lanka was represented.
This NYT story describes a phase transition. Small players are beginning to outsource; the tasks are more complex and creative. This is huge for small countries and small service export firms. The production values may be a little amateurish by MTV standards, but for $2,000 it cost a small fraction of the typical budget for a professional film. And Mr.
There was a small but high profile Government Transformation Forum organized in Kovalam, Kerala, Feb 5-6, 2012. The Kerala Chief Minister and the Minister in charge of IT made appearances and the high-profile MP of the area, Dr Shashi Tharoor, delivered the keynote address and showed deep engagement. I chaired the session on international and Indian best practices and made a presentation based primarily on the experiences of designing e Sri Lanka back in 2002-03 and LIRNEasia research. My key message was that there were no best practices that could be imported to Kerala. What were best were what fit the specific circumstances.
It has been an unfortunate fact that Sri Lanka and India have signed many agreements that have not been implemented. This caused me to write a column some years back entitled “An MOU to implement MOUs.”. The one difference that I see in the short LBO report on cooperation between India and Sri Lanka on telecom is that the word MOU has been replaced by agreement. But I hope I am wrong and that there will be real implementation.
We complain every time early warning is not given or false warnings/evacuation orders are issued. But praise must be given when right action is taken and lives are saved. Indian authorities are to be praised. Witnesses in Chennai and Pondicherry said trees had been toppled, there had been power outages throughout the night and disruption to phone and internet services in some areas. Hundreds of people from fishing communities along north Tamil Nadu’s coast, and neighbouring Andhra Pradesh state, have moved to schools set up as relief centres until the weather system passes.
When I was in government, I heard complaints of shortages of scarce resources and ability to earn adequate revenue all the time. I paid attention, but always verified. Specifically, with regard to claims of spectrum “shortage,” there is a problem. It is true that without a minimum allotment (say 2.5 MHz for CDMA and 5 MHz coupled on GSM), it’s next to impossible to properly design a network.
Google sees mobiles as the future, especially in markets like India, according to Business Standard. Mobile Internet fastest growing vertical, says Google India MD. Listing a set of next big trends in the overall technology sector, Google India says mobile Internet is set to lead the way for the industry. As against 14 per cent in the US, 11 per cent in Russia, and 6 per cent in the UK, Google India sees about 40 per cent search queries from mobile phones in the country. “Mobile phones are the future.