Union Minister of State for Communications and IT Sachin Pilot led the rural crowd during the 10-minute interface at the nondescript village, 40 km from Ajmer, while Mr. Obama was accompanied by Sam Pitroda, Advisor to Prime Minister on Public Information Infrastructure and Innovations, at St. Xavier's College in Mumbai.
Kanpura is one of the 10 villages in Ajmer district connected with the optical fibre cable (OFC) technology as part of a pilot project sponsored by the Union Ministry of Information Technology. The e-gram project has brought high-speed connectivity to the rural community facilitating access to a host of essential public services.
After a brief introduction by Mr. Pitroda, Mr. Obama spoke to the villagers about the benefits of broadband penetration realised through access to health and education-related data, online medical consultation, redress of public grievances and local e-governance.
Large LCD screens and web cameras were installed at the village panchayat office for live telecast of the first-ever virtual meeting between the residents of the desert State village and the U.S. President. Though much of Mr. Obama's observations could not be heard because of the poor audio quality, he seemed visibly pleased by the warm welcome extended with a loud “Namaste” by the village children.
Panchayat secretary Shiv Shankar told Mr. Obama that he could refer the complaints relating to drinking water and faulty hand-pumps to the higher authorities over Internet and they were rectified without delay as against the weeks taken in the past.
Primary Health Centre nurse Sunita Rathore explained how she could access the digitised medical records of villagers, especially children and pregnant women, to plan their vaccination and delivery schedules.
Similarly, management student Vipul Jhanwar informed Mr. Obama that he was pursuing further studies via Internet by downloading the course material and appearing online for various exams instead of travelling long distance to Ajmer. A woman villager Mamta said her son was treated through telemedicine facility offered by the project.
Mahendra Kumar, a farmer, was all praise for the OFC connectivity through which he had obtained his land records and applied for the kisan credit card. Sarpanch Jagdish Bairwa expressed happiness over Kanpura emerging on the world map through the interface with the U.S. head of the State.
Mr. Pilot, who represents the Ajmer constituency in the Lok Sabha, said the complete digitisation of records for Kanpura with a population of 4,500 was underway, while most of the village panchayats across the country would be connected with the OFC tec
hnology during the next five years.
“The initiative will offer the IT services and digital facilities in the rural areas, bringing them on par with the metros such as Mumbai and Delhi. IT is set to change the face of rural India,” said Mr. Pilot.
Mr. Obama expressed happiness over the progress made by the small village with the help of information technology. He said the efforts were also underway in the U.S. to make the government “accountable and efficient”.
Mr. Pilot later said the U.S. President made a reference during the interaction to the collaborations between the U.S. and India and noted that the technological advancement could help deliver essential services in the “sparsely populated areas” and “logistically remote sections of population”.
Apart from villagers, MLAs of the region Mahendra Singh Gujjar, Nathuram Sinodia and Naseem Akhtar, Ajmer Mayor Kamal Bakolia, panchayat pradhan R. Gujjar and Ajmer Collector Rajesh Yadav were present.
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Quelle/Source: The Hindu, 08.11.2010
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