[OLPC India] India Digest, Vol 23, Issue 11

[Satish Jha]

Ed,

Thanks much. I do not want to respond to personal attacks. Those who have
known me may recall that as a teenager I created the first landless
labourers coop bank in a village in MP, I come from a village, was engaged
in youth against famine in my teens and yet I would not claim to know
any more than the person I may respect for their knowledge of India.

You are right about the examples you have given below. I have been engaged
in at least a few dozen rural projects that have tried embracing
technologies of our times to create a culture of local entrepreneurship and
improve the quality of life. I have been very impressed by the number of
folks who would like to have access to XO even at a fee of Rs 100 a month,
though that represent a huge sum for them. Then again, much of the developed
world spends about a third to half of the family income on education when
its time for the kids to go to college. My parents spent about a third of
their income of $30 a month on our education.

Education is perhaps an investment that offers resource poor the highest
ROI. Any and every penny spent on it goes a long way and the poorest among
us understand it just as well. However, what they do need is a little easier
access.

Thanks and regards

On Sat, Nov 1, 2008 at 6:15 PM, Edward Cherlin <echerlin at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sat, Nov 1, 2008 at 2:42 PM, Marc Valentin
> <mvalentin at oeuvredespains.org> wrote:
> > On Sat, Nov 1, 2008 at 1:06 PM, Satish Jha OLPC <satish at laptop.org>
> wrote:
> >> While I do not agree with nearly any of the observations made below and
> am
> >> witnessing how things can be and are being changed, I would prefer some
> >> other members of this group to take it forward.
> >
> > Satish, there is no point to agree or not, you should acknowledge that
> > most of the people of this list have a better understanding of India
> > (the real one) than you have.
>
> That seems a strange claim to me. What do you know about Satish's
> experience? What is yours?
>
> > Did you ever spend some days living in a
> > village among the people ?
>
> I have. Peace Corps, South Korea, 1967, when they were economically
> far behind where India is now, and living under a military
> dictatorship somewhat like Pakistan's today, with occasional
> cross-border attacks from the North. A good friend of my best friend
> there died from a grenade tossed on a bus by a failed North Korean
> assassination team.
>
> > Do you know what is their budget to live
> > (survive) for one month ? Do you know how they live ?
>
> Yes. Subsistence farmers and day laborers made less than a dollar a
> day at that time. Peace Corps Volunteers lived fairly comfortably on
> about $6/day.
>
> >The XO should be
> > seen as what it is : a nice tool. It is not a revolution.
>
> This turns out not to be the case. Unless you think that
>
> o Grameen Phone was not revolutionary in expanding telephone service
> from cities only to nearly all of Bangladesh, and attracting several
> billion dollars in hard investment money.
>
> o Or that Overstock.com was not certified by the government of
> Afghanistan as the largest employer in the country, even with no
> physical presence, because tens of thousands of people could sell art
> and craft items online, receiving more than 60% of the final selling
> price. Sellers did not need to own a computer, but just had to know
> somebody who knew somebody who had a computer.
>
> o Or that the ITC e-choupal project has significantly increased farm
> income in tens of thousands of villages of India by placing one
> computer per village to give them access to the Chicago Board of Trade
> soybean prices and other market information, and buy based on world
> prices.
>
> o Or that the XO is not revolutionizing education in Peru and
> Ethiopia, as stated in published articles and formal studies. See, for
> example, http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Academic_papers and
> http://radian.org/notebook/astounded-in-arahuay.
>
> And so on through a multitude of other examples.
> --
> Silent Thunder (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) is my name
> And Children are my nation.
> The Cosmos is my dwelling place, The Truth my destination.
> http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mokurai
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