Cyber Grameen venture to bridge digital divide
A quiet village on the National Highway 5 near Nellore was today buzzing with activity.
Several Union Cabinet Ministers, Ministers of the Andhra Pradesh Government and a host of dignitaries including top officials of Andhra Bank, Indian Bank and United Insurance, descended at Venkatachalam to commission the first rural broadband convergence project christened— Cyber Grameen.
In an innovative video-conferencing covering nearly seven to eight centres, right from New Delhi, Hyderabad, the Ramoji Film City, Mumbai among others, this village centre, located near the home town of the BJP President, Mr M.Venkiah Naidu, was commissioned today.
Cyber Grammen is a rural broadband venture that brings in convergence aimed at bridging the digital divide.
More interestingly, it provides a single-point interface for various Central and State Government services apart from providing edutainment, rural healthcare and telemedicine.
Backed by an Internet broadband, Cyber Grameen, developed by Swarna Bharat Trust, a non-profit organisation, has been created to serve as a model to similar projects where host of technology products and services are offered at the doorstep in a remote village. By utilising these projects and services, villagers can not only learn more about the Government initiatives, but also have access to the whole of the world by using VoIP (voice over Internet telephony).
The Swarna Bharat Trust is chaired by the Chennai-based Chairman nad Managing Director of Spartek group, and has on it some other industrialists. The project was conceived and developed towards giving something back to the society, according to Mr Krishna Prasad Tripuraneni, CMD, Spartek group.
Apart from offering telecom services, the centre serves as a single point interface for a village where a farmer can access valuable agricultural and weather-related information to empower and help them in their day-to-day activities. The centre has a modern telemedicine centre with a hook-up for consultancy from any part of the world.
The Union Minister for Urban development, Mr Anant Kumar, describing the centre as the first of its kind said that all efforts would be made to ensure that more such centres were set up across the country. Many more Cyber Grameen centres are planned in other parts of the country wherein they will start providing villages with the benefits that Venkatachalam will derive from the rural broadband technology.
Well, what does the Cyber Grameen centre do for a villager? Right from telephony services, telemedicine, distance learning, high speed Internet and e-mail, it has a retail store as well.
In the sphere of agricultural services, this centre provides expert advice on crop protection, market facilities and agricultural produce buy and sell price quotes.
The Cyber Grameen centre has entered into arrangement with the computer education training company, SISI, wherein a computer-training lab will be maintained.
This lab will serve as a multi-purpose community computer education centre. This innovative concept is designed to serve as a video-conference centre that provides a two-way interactive video and voice, which facilitates easy communication across the world. In a demonstration of this facility, a group from the Directorate of Development of Women and Children (DWCRA) interacted with the Chief Minister, Mr N. Chandrababu Naidu.
Even the rural banking concept is set to change. The Cyber Grameen centre provides people access to various banking services. By using this centre, one can make online deposits, withdrawals, demand drafts, passbook updation and other services.
To make these centres self-reliant, the trust is keen to put a revenue model is in place.
Towards this end, a digital entertainment facility has been created where villagers can have access to movies and other entertainment at a nominal fee.
This amount will in turn be deployed for other community welfare related use.
Corporate medical facility for village
HYDERABAD: Global Hospitals here has been linked with Cyber Grameen at Venkatachalam in Nellore district to make sophisticated medical facilities accessible to villagers through a tele-medicine project.
Swarna Bharat Trust has launched the project for the benefit of people in and around the village.
The project obviates the need of the villagers to visit Hyderabad for diagnosis and treatment of their ailments. Local doctors can make use of the service of specialists of Global Hospitals who can talk to patients, study data and images transmitted to them, diagnose diseases and offer suitable line of treatment.
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