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Close to home, Nepal has an estimated 900 micro-hydro-electric installations scattered throughout 59 of Nepal's 75 districts. Back home in India, 1500 micro hydro-electric systems generating power in range of 2 KW to 10 KW has been envisaged for state of J&K.

Moreover, Indian Institute of Science has developed a very low powered computer. The device has been named Simputer⁵. Simputer can be run on 3 normal AA size batteries for 5 hours. The Simputer can do away with the oft-repeated argument that computers can't be run in villages due to lack of electricity. More progressive states and proactive villages can opt for fully matured micro-hydroelectric installations.

5.3. Lack of Communication Facilities to Hook to Internet - Examples from Bangladesh, South Africa & India

In Bangladesh, after the success of Grameen Bank, Prof. Yunus decided to leverage on the network already created by providing cell phones in 45,000 villages. The company called Grameen Phone till date has provided phones to women in 1,300 villages. Women have purchased these phones using microcredit facility and are earning by selling telephone services to fellow villagers to make calls to other cities within Bangladesh as well as overseas. A typical Grameen telephone lady earns twice the per capita income of the Bangladesh, that too within a month of purchasing the phone.

Villagers are using the telephone connection for finding out good market for their eggs and baskets they want to sell. A cellular phone in a village may not be an apt example of e-commerce. However, a telephone connection is a vital link for initiation of any e-commerce activity. Today, all these 1,300 villages are sitting on an inflection point where rural economy could take wings by hooking up cellular phones with computers to access World Wide Web. Internet can bring the cost of checking prices to a fraction to what it takes using cellular phone.

5 The Simputer is a powerful full-featured handheld computer. Simputer-based solutions are extremely user-friendly because of Simputer's special features like low power, compactness, mobility, simple-to-use icon-based interfaces, and Integrated Smartcard reader. The Simputer enables to build large IT solutions at a fraction of the cost normally associated with such projects.

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* Contributed by -
Rohit Garg,
Final Year, PGDM,
S. P. Jain Institute of Management & Research, Mumbai.