<div>Ed,</div>
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<div>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.</div>
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<div>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.</div>
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<div>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.</div>
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<div>Thanks and regards<br><br></div>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, Nov 1, 2008 at 6:15 PM, Edward Cherlin <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:echerlin@gmail.com">echerlin@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">
<div class="Ih2E3d">On Sat, Nov 1, 2008 at 2:42 PM, Marc Valentin<br><<a href="mailto:mvalentin@oeuvredespains.org">mvalentin@oeuvredespains.org</a>> wrote:<br>> On Sat, Nov 1, 2008 at 1:06 PM, Satish Jha OLPC <<a href="mailto:satish@laptop.org">satish@laptop.org</a>> wrote:<br>
>> While I do not agree with nearly any of the observations made below and am<br>>> witnessing how things can be and are being changed, I would prefer some<br>>> other members of this group to take it forward.<br>
><br>> Satish, there is no point to agree or not, you should acknowledge that<br>> most of the people of this list have a better understanding of India<br>> (the real one) than you have.<br><br></div>That seems a strange claim to me. What do you know about Satish's<br>
experience? What is yours?<br>
<div class="Ih2E3d"><br>> Did you ever spend some days living in a<br>> village among the people ?<br><br></div>I have. Peace Corps, South Korea, 1967, when they were economically<br>far behind where India is now, and living under a military<br>
dictatorship somewhat like Pakistan's today, with occasional<br>cross-border attacks from the North. A good friend of my best friend<br>there died from a grenade tossed on a bus by a failed North Korean<br>assassination team.<br>
<div class="Ih2E3d"><br>> Do you know what is their budget to live<br>> (survive) for one month ? Do you know how they live ?<br><br></div>Yes. Subsistence farmers and day laborers made less than a dollar a<br>day at that time. Peace Corps Volunteers lived fairly comfortably on<br>
about $6/day.<br>
<div class="Ih2E3d"><br>>The XO should be<br>> seen as what it is : a nice tool. It is not a revolution.<br><br></div>This turns out not to be the case. Unless you think that<br><br>o Grameen Phone was not revolutionary in expanding telephone service<br>
from cities only to nearly all of Bangladesh, and attracting several<br>billion dollars in hard investment money.<br><br>o Or that Overstock.com was not certified by the government of<br>Afghanistan as the largest employer in the country, even with no<br>
physical presence, because tens of thousands of people could sell art<br>and craft items online, receiving more than 60% of the final selling<br>price. Sellers did not need to own a computer, but just had to know<br>somebody who knew somebody who had a computer.<br>
<br>o Or that the ITC e-choupal project has significantly increased farm<br>income in tens of thousands of villages of India by placing one<br>computer per village to give them access to the Chicago Board of Trade<br>soybean prices and other market information, and buy based on world<br>
prices.<br><br>o Or that the XO is not revolutionizing education in Peru and<br>Ethiopia, as stated in published articles and formal studies. See, for<br>example, <a href="http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Academic_papers" target="_blank">http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Academic_papers</a> and<br>
<a href="http://radian.org/notebook/astounded-in-arahuay" target="_blank">http://radian.org/notebook/astounded-in-arahuay</a>.<br><br>And so on through a multitude of other examples.<br>
<div class="Ih2E3d">--<br>Silent Thunder (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) is my name<br>And Children are my nation.<br>The Cosmos is my dwelling place, The Truth my destination.<br><a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mokurai" target="_blank">http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mokurai</a><br>
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