From saumya at sarai.net Wed May 16 15:32:03 2001 From: saumya at sarai.net (Saumya Gupta) Date: Wed, 16 May 2001 10:02:03 GMT Subject: Sarai Newsletter 02 Message-ID: <20010516.10020300@saumya.sarai.kit> Dear Friends In April, an interdisciplinary workshop around the body and air was held at Sarai. A two member Sarai team participated in the Collaboration and Ownership in the Digital Economy (CODE) Conference, held at Cambridge, UK. Reports on the conference and the workshop follow, along with the schedule for the month of May. Conference Report Collaboration and Ownership in the Digital Economy http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/CODE/ The CODE conference took place at Queen's College in Cambridge from the 4th to the 6th of April, 2001, and the people speaking in it ranged from Richard Stallman (founder of the Free Software Foundation), Bruce Perens (author of the Debian Social Contract), Tim Hubbard (of the Human Genome Project) to Marilyn Strathern (anthropologist), Rishabh Aiyer Ghosh (Economist), Geert Lovink (Media Theorist) and Drazen Pantic (founder of OpenNet) amongst others. The aim of the conference was to look at the intricacies of creative and inventive developmental models of Free (as in freedom) and Open source software, and their implications in terms of economy, property law, knowledge and other forms of cultural production. The most significant part of the conference was its attempt to track down the premises of copyright laws and to figure out ways in which to contest the present mad expansion of copyright regimes into the digital domain. The ideas of the Public Database, the free movement of information in the digital domain and a more open and democratic content development ethos are areas that need focussed engagement and creative intervention. Jeebesh Bagchi was invited from Sarai to attend the conference, and he and Supreet Sethi also made a presentation on Sarai to the participants. Webcast of audio recordings of the conference proceedings available at http://www.ArtsOnline.com/ Workshop at Sarai The Oxygen Project An interdisciplinary workshop on the Oxygen project was held at Sarai from April 14 - 20, 2001. Oxygen plans to become an immersive multimedia experience involving interactive installations utilising experimental interfaces, video, sound, contemporary performance art and Indian Classical dance forms. This project is a collaborative, cross-cultural and processual work founded on intersections of different media practices, performance traditions, and cultural backgrounds. It premises itself on an active participatory relationship with spectators and is designed to provoke reflection on the intangible but universal bodily function of breathing, and to give rise to an acute sensory awareness in players and participants of what it means to breathe and live in our times. It explores themes of urgent environmental concern like the quality of the air we breathe, and the intimate politics of breathing space and suffocation. It works with experiences of emancipation and illness, motion and stillness, metaphors for body and spirit, to create a physical and mental space in which the unseen fabric of air between people comes alive to become an active agent of understanding, feeling and movement. Monica Narula (Raqs Media Collective/Sarai), a video artist and photographer based in New Delhi, Sarah Neville (Heliograph Productions), a dancer and media choreographer based in Adelaide, and Mari Velonaki, (mvstudio) a media and installation artist based in Sydney, are working on the project along with Umashankar, soundscape designer, and Mrinmoyee Majumdar, Odissi dancer. More information on the project is available on the Sarai site at http://www.sarai.net/ Schedule for May, 2001 Workshop at Sarai The Cybermohalla Project The Cybermohalla project was initiated at Sarai with a month long workshop in collaboration with the Children's Education Department of Ankur: Society for Alternatives in Education. Ankur is involved with 'right to education campaign', campaign for rights of the child, campaign against child labour, the feminist movement and campaign for housing rights. The Cybermohalla project is designed to collaborate with a non-elite urban population to explore and expand new media tools and media strategies, so as to engender a broader production base for technologically mediated communication. The idea is to interact with those traditionally left out of contemporary media culture, engage with the existing dynamism and innovation available in the non-elite domains and try out a specific model of expansion that will be decentralised and capable of easy replication. Ten children, around fifteen - eighteen years old, are provided basic training in computers, audio recording, photography and text and image processing softwares to generate creative and innovative content for web and other media like posters, cartoon strip, audio tape, CD-R and photographs. The whole project is run on a GNU - Linux free software platform. The workshop will be on at the Sarai Public Access area all through May, after which the centre of activity will shift to the Basti Vikas Kendra at J.P. Colony. Turkman Gate, New Delhi. Talk at Sarai On 29th May, 2001, Amitava Kumar will give a presentation titled A reverie in the American Centre Library. The talk is based on the preface from his next book, and tries to link two markers: Library Call Number PK321 (under which, A. K. Ramanujam wrote, " the East has found a niche in the West") and PL480 (or the law of the US Congress which legislated the transfer of grain from US to countries like India and Pakistan). The linkages between these markers provide Amitava Kumar an opportunity to make some general comments, or assume a stance, vis-a-vis what we might call the circulation of goods and services in global culture. The talk will be held at 4:30 pm, in the Seminar Room, of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi - 110054. Thank you for the response to the Sarai reader list. It is developing into an active and exciting forum. Please go to the url http://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list or mail at monica at sarai.net to subscribe. The archive of the reader-list is available online. The Sarai Reader 01 is available online on our site, at http://www.sarai.net/journal/reader.htm Thanks for your patience! Saumya ------------------- If you received this in error or would like to be removed from our list, please return us indicating: remove or un-subscribe in 'subject' field. From rkrishnan at ti.com Wed May 16 19:27:30 2001 From: rkrishnan at ti.com (Ramakrishnan M) Date: Wed, 16 May 2001 19:27:30 +0530 Subject: Sarai Newsletter 02 References: <20010516.10020300@saumya.sarai.kit> Message-ID: <3B02874A.3A20A8BD@ti.com> Saumya Gupta wrote: > > The CODE conference took place at Queen's College in Cambridge from > the 4th to the 6th of April, 2001, and the people speaking in it > ranged from Richard Stallman (founder of the Free Software > Foundation), Bruce Perens (author of the Debian Social Contract), Tim > Hubbard (of the Human Genome Project) to Marilyn Strathern > (anthropologist), Rishabh Aiyer Ghosh (Economist), Geert Lovink > (Media Theorist) and Drazen Pantic (founder of OpenNet) amongst > others. > .. > .. > .. > .. > Webcast of audio recordings of the conference proceedings available at > http://www.ArtsOnline.com/ Hello I read with lots of interest this newsletter. (I don't know how I got subscribed to it, but I like it and would like to continue with the subscription). It's great to have such a group in a place like India. I have always felt that the Free Software movement should have stregthened more in India, but unfortunately, it has not recieved wide aclaim among the "developers", though there millions of users of Free Software (though they don't really know that they are using Free Software) in India now. I have a suggestion. If you can contact the artsOnline people, please ask them to put the webcast recordings of the CODE conference proceedings in Ogg format (see http://www.xiph.org/ogg/ for details) which is a patent free format. It's a paradox that users require the non-free ("free" as in freedom not in price) real player to hear the webcast about Free Software!!! -- Ramakrishnan M Work: http://www.ti.com/ Play: http://www.symonds.net/~rkrishnan/ From zubair at isb.sdnpk.org Thu May 17 13:28:45 2001 From: zubair at isb.sdnpk.org (Zubair Faisal Abbasi) Date: Thu, 17 May 2001 12:58:45 +0500 Subject: Sarai Newsletter ePoor.org In-Reply-To: <20010516.10020300@saumya.sarai.kit> Message-ID: Dear Saumya, Greetings from Pakistan! The following outlines a Pakistan based initiative spearheaded to bridge digital divide with pro-poor perspective. This initiative is rooted in 'community development approach' and seeks to create synergy of both the computer-based software of the Information technology and community-based 'social software' of the pro-poor organizations and programmes. I hope, the following helps explaining the mission, philosophy, and core themes of the "most needed" initiative in Pakistan. Regards, Zubair Faisal Abbasi. CEO/Project Director, ePoor.org Waheed Plaza, West 52, First Floor, Blue Area, Islamabad, Pakistan. Ph: 092-051-2201484, 0303-7759274 -------------------------------------------------------- Let Us Make IT Empowering The Poor And The Marginalized -------------------------------------------------------- http://ePoor.org IT empowers Mission The mission of ePoor.org is to overcome the digital divide in Pakistan. To this end, it will develop information technology (IT) solutions for poverty eradication, undertake and advocate measures to enhance the access of poor communities to IT resources, and provide policy advice and carry out advocacy to ensure the installation of structures and frameworks required for pro-poor development. Philosophy The philosophy of ePoor.org is based on the highly successful efforts of community development led by such pioneers as Akhter Hameed Khan and Shoaib Sultan Khan. These efforts revolve around the creation of social capital to enhance the coping and adaptive capacities and strategies of the poor. An alternative to the traditional, charity-based approaches to poverty eradication, the pro-poor perspective relies on interventions that strategically reinforce each other in enhancing the collective capacity of poor communities. In Pakistan, such interventions have taken the form of rural support programs, community building programs, integrated rural development programs and others. While there is considerable diversity among these programs, they all share a belief that the best way of eradicating poverty is by targeting the community, namely by strengthening the capacity of local communities to solve their own problems and overcome their obstacles. The focus on community can help build up capacity in the rural areas to access and use other development resources, including for example, public sector investments, micro-credit, appropriate technology, and managerial and entrepreneurial resources. Background: Technological Change and Poverty Eradication The success of the community development programs in Pakistan and elsewhere was bolstered considerably by the fact that their introduction coincided with the emergence of a major technological breakthrough, the Green Revolution. On the one hand, it provided the advocates of community organization with a general-purpose tool that could enhance the income generation capacity of the poor; and on the other hand, it provided a badly needed corrective to the possibly inegalitarian impact of the technological revolution as well as its potential of dissipating social structures and destabilizing political arrangements. Today, the IT revolution has stimulated hopes of similar opportunities and fears of similar adverse impacts. On the one hand, it has spurred a tremendous expansion in investment and productivity, but on the other hand its benefits are increasingly restricted to a small and economically advanced minority. In Pakistan, the highly ambitious program on technological development is oriented mainly towards the dynamic, urban, and export-oriented sector. The expanding access to IT resources is concentrated in the metropolitan areas, the developing data and information systems are oriented towards the needs precisely of these areas, whose residents will be the only one to benefit from the envisaged improvements in governance, quality of public services, and the emerging investment opportunities and consequent productivity growth. The danger is that as in other countries, the unfolding of the potential of IT and the success of the governmental program to facilitate such unfolding will further deepen the divide between the rich and the poor, and thus further destabilize the polity, undermine social structures, and impoverish and marginalize rural areas. There is a need for creative and critical thinking to determine how the potential of this revolution can be harnessed in the interests of poor communities. This is not a new idea. Concerns about the emerging digital divide are fairly well known and have been remarked upon by a variety of observers ranging from Bill Gates to Hillary Clinton, from the management Guru C. K. Prahalad to the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, and from the NGO visionary Ashok Khosla to the World Bank President James Wolfensohn. The IT policy of the government of Pakistan, as that of many other developing countries, recognizes these concerns and seeks to support innovative solutions. However, these policy aims have not yet been translated into practice. Indeed, the only investment thus far is in programs with relatively low and uncertain payoffs, most particularly the opening of technology training schools in rural areas. The ePoor Response The initiative of ePoor.org is to respond precisely to this challenge. In contrast to the top-down and “supply-side” orientation of the existing programs, our approach starts from what may be described as the demand side of technology. This approach does not take the view that technological adaptation and development is hindered primarily by the high costs of technology – or, equivalently, that it can be facilitated by a variety of subsidies. Rather, this approach concentrates on the inadequate individual and collective capacity of marginalized groups to benefit from the technology, and thus seeks to invest in actions that would enhance this ability to benefit. In other words, this program is oriented towards creating a demand for technology, with the assumption that the market can then provide the appropriate response to the demand. The main vehicle for such demand creation is investment in the capacity of communities to use the resources for their own economic, social, political, and cultural purposes. As a result, ePoor.org seeks mainly to work collaboratively with community development organizations to raise awareness, collect and organize information that can be of use to poor communities, and advocate changes that can provide these communities equal access to knowledge resources and infrastructure of IT. Program of Work The showcase activity of ePoor.org is the proposed Villages OnLine (VOL) portal. It will operate only in selected districts, chosen in collaboration with community development organizations, and aim to digitize all relevant information in each village – including data on economic, demographic, and institutional variables, cultural and social trends, production of goods and services, property rights, and development activities – structure it and put it on-line. In doing so, the aim is to enable the communities to monitor their progress, learn from others, market their products, and assess the quality of the services and facilities available to them. Another aim is to encourage imitation, and thus the development of independent regional databases, which can be linked to each other. The purpose of VOL is to simultaneously enhance the access of poor communities to governance, markets, services, and technologies. The database will provide transparency, enable tracking of information and progress, facilitate collective decisions, export lessons of experience, provide information on crafts and products of the village, identify investment opportunities as well as opportunities for philanthropic and charitable activities. More importantly, by creating information that is at the same time relevant and useful for village communities, it will provide an incentive for using the database and therefore developing IT capacity in the community. This activity will be an ongoing one, and will provide the spine or the central frame around which other modules will be arranged, although they will be developed independently and will have independent utility. The initial expansion of this information in the rural areas will be through the community development network. The financial structure of the arrangement will be refined over time. Initially, it will have to be subsidized so as to create an awareness of the utility of the information. Subsequently, it can be provided commercially through franchising operations. Once the database reaches a critical stage in its development, the portal can begin to sustain itself financially by lining the fee to the maintenance and development costs. The VOL module will be bilingual initially. Subsequently, through a separate activity, it will be extended to regional languages as well. It will also use voice recognition technology to facilitate access by non-literate populations. Starting from the idea that poverty eradication is best addressed through interventions that strengthen the capacity of communities, ePoor’s program of work has been divided into four major themes: “ePoor Governance”, “ePoor Markets”, “ePoor Services”, and “ePoor Technologies”. We use the word poor deliberately, in order to suggest that notwithstanding the common dictionary meanings, the word “poor” need not mean “low quality”. Thus, we use “ePoor governance” to refer to governance that is relevant to the conditions of the poor, not to the quality of governance to which the poor – and indeed, all the people of Pakistan – have become accustomed. The four thematic areas are oriented respectively towards capacity for self-governance, benefiting from market opportunities, accessing social services, and using and deploying technologies. These should be viewed as supportive activities, which are meant to facilitate and stimulate actions by governments, community development organizations, and the private sector. Within the overall themes, the work program will be divided into modules or projects. Each modules is selected on the basis of three criteria: relevance to the overall goals of the theme area, interest in collaboration by partner organizations, and strategic impact of the work in mobilizing supportive actions by governments, NGOs and the private sector. Core Themes Under the core themes the activities given below are based on the ePoor.org’ s efforts for relevant content, infrastructure and capacity development of poor communities. 1- ePoor Governance - The aim of the Poor Governance theme is to support the use of IT for improving the system of governance, and in particular making it accessible and responsive towards the needs of the poor. The conception of this theme revolves around two strands: disclosure and outreach. - The first strand – disclosure – refers to making information of a public nature available in a manner that it is easily and readily accessible to the poor. - An example is the proposed NGOs on the Web (NOW) database and search engine, which will collect and organize information on pro-poor organizations and place it on the web. It will thus enable shared learning among these organizations, set standards of performance, encourage disclosure and transparency, and thus help attract resources and export knowledge. A companion module is the Corporate Law Information Project (CLIP), which seeks to make information on corporate groups widely accessible. - The second strand – outreach – refers to collecting information on markets, products, services, and institutions that can help local communities make better decisions. It also includes information about the communities themselves; such information can attract attention as well as resources for the communities. The primary engine for this activity is the VOL program. - This initiative can also work in tandem with the initiative to work as eHosts and thus develop broad based opportunities for online consultations, documentation and transcription. 2- ePoor Markets - The goal of this theme area is the creation of pro-poor market opportunities through the judicious application of information technology. - Again, the primary engine for this activity is the VOL project. It will be oriented towards providing information to potential buyers of products and services produced in villages – which can be developed (subsequently, and as a separate activity) into an e-commerce program to enable sale and purchase of goods and services over the web. - A related activity is the development of web-based sources of information on goods and products needed by poor communities, including seeds, fertilizer, construction materials, and others. Again, this can be developed separately into an e-commerce site. - Developing policy advice and advocacy on initiating processes through which the benefits of information technology begin to reach poor communities - including pricing policies, infrastructure development, incentives for businesses, credit policies, e-governance policies, and others. 3- ePoor Services - The aim of this theme area is to promote and facilitate the use of IT in the provision of social services (education, health) in order both to improve the quality of these services, and to make them accessible to poor communities and rural areas. - Given the overall philosophy of the approach, the structure of the ePoor Services is to enhance the capacity of village communities to mobilize, access, manage, and monitor the delivery of social services. To this end, the goal is to organize information and knowledge resources into poor-friendly formats and structures. - A component program, ePoor Health, will be developed in collaboration with health-based organizations (e.g. APPNA-Sehat), and will be aimed at collecting information that can enable the community-based health groups to access information on health-related issues from the web. Some of this information is already present on the web (e.g. through webdoctor.org). The rest can be collected and organized in the form of a web portal with links to existing sites. - A second component, ePoor Education, will aim to assist village communities accessing and improving education services. A flagship program in this area is the Virtual Library project, being developed in collaboration with SDPI and the University of Peshawar. - The theme area also includes the identification of institutional and financial mechanisms to induce services to move into rural or poor areas, and for these service agencies to register improvements in quality. 4- ePoor Technologies - Research on the information needs of the urban and rural poor. The research includes the aspects of access and control over IT infrastructure and content. - Development of portals and websites that provide access to information of relevance and use to the target communities. - Policy recommendations on equitable IT sector growth which fosters better prospects for participatory and equitable growth. Deliverables Websites, information portals, compact discs, IT solutions including e-commerce and support for e-conferencing Governance ePoor.org is a non-profit public interest organization. It has independent Board of Governors and is managed by Project Director who works with a team of IT specialists. Partnerships and Projects ePoor.org seeks to develop a partnership networks to advance the agenda of overcoming the digital divide. To this end, it has started developing a long list of potential collaborators, including pro-poor NGOs, software developers, business groups, government institutions, and organizations engaged in research, advice and advocacy. The aims of such partnerships are: · Synergies from complementary skills, knowledge and experience. · Getting support for remote volunteering, internship programmes. · Opportunities to develop more culturally and politically sensitive IT development approaches. · Strengthening of local human resource talent and leadership for equitable IT sector growth. · More cost-effective delivery closer to end-users specially those living in remote rural areas. · Inter-organizational knowledge sharing and learning. The following organizations have been contacted for joint work: 1- SUNGI Development Foundation (http://sungi.sdnpk.org) ePoor.org has approached SUNGI and SAAG (Sustainable Agriculture Action Group) to jointly undertake a website development and CD publishing project on using IT in advocacy on farmer’s rights, food rights, and unethical incidence of bio-technologies. Initial understanding has been reached and now project proposal is being developed. 2- Consumer Rights Commission of Pakistan (http://crcp.sdnpk.org) ePoor.org has approached CRCP to develop a joint project on Consumer Education and Empowerment. The project includes a consumer portal and CD to disseminate information on consumer issues, consumer concerns regarding products and services, consumer laws, and networking consumer initiatives etc. The project proposal is ready for submission to other partner organizations. 3- TheNetwork for Consumer Protection in Pakistan (http://thenetwork.org.pk) TheNetwork is being contacted to join the above-mentioned project on Consumer Education and Empowerment. This organization would be a good resource on information on consumer issues especially on health related problems. 4- Ghazi Barotha Tarqiati Idara (GBTI), A project NGO working for the rehabilitation of the project affected person of Ghazi Barotha Hydropower Project has been contacted for the pilot phase of VOL (Villages Online) in which ePoor.org would create websites of the three Model Villages developed for project affected persons. These websites would bring into focus the economy, governance structure, poverty profile, demography, social services (e.g., education and health facilities), and other aspects of living. 5- APNA Sehat http://www.appna.org/SEHAT.htm APNA SEHAT, an innovative project of Association of Pakistani Physicians of North America for primary health care in rural areas, has been contacted and they have assured full cooperation in developing partnership and contribute in ePoor.org efforts. 6- IDSP - Institute for Development Studies and Practice (http://idsp.sdnpk.org) IDSP institute has been contacted and it is willing to work in close collaboration with ePoor.org. The fact that the institute has orientation of ‘information technology as a tool for development’ the partnership with ePoor.org has a lot of potential for collaborative work especially in the remote areas. 7- Computer Society of Pakistan Computer Society of Pakistan, has been contacted and it has shown great interest in collaborating with ePoor.org. This body of IT specialists is working to promote computer use for education, impart IT training to students and professionals, and holding IT seminars and exhibitions. Projects In the start up phase of its activities, ePoor.org has developed the following projects and seeking partners to start working on them: VOL: Villages Online. NOW: NGOs On the Web. CLIP: Corporate Law Information Project. CIEP: Consumer Information and Empowerment Programme. Virtual Library: Project is under development with Peshawar University and SDPI. PRIDE: Participatory, Representative, and Informative Dialogue. eMART: Expanding Market of The Rural and Traditional eHealth: Expanding the Health Care