Introduction
The cycles with attached Internet cart is going to visit in
different Indian villages to train the rustic women on the Internet medium.
This is part of Make India Digital initiative, which is one of the pet projects
of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, to make Indian business completely
digital. This novel idea is designed by Tata Trusts in partnership with Google
India Private Limited. The initiative aimed at empowering rural Indian women with
the power of the Internet is christened as ‘Internet Saathi’. The partners to
this project have officially rolled out it on July 3, 2015. At the launch, the
Chairman of Tata Trusts Ratan Tata told a small gathering that the access to the
Internet has changed the way people are acquiring knowledge in the world. The
same was acknowledged by the Google South Asia and India Managing Director and
Vice-President Rajan Anandan who spoke about the skewed scenario of internet
access with men outnumbering women in both rural and urban India.
Internet Saathi Project
The joint initiative of Tata Trusts, the philanthropic organization
of Tata Sons Group, and the Indian arm of Google Pvt. Ltd. has decided to help
the rural woman folks to reap the benefits of the Internet and empower them for
a better tomorrow. The proponents of the “Internet Saathi” project have chosen
to call the vehicle of change as Internet Cycle. According to the partners,
this project is designed to provide basic training on the usage and benefits of
the Internet. For this purpose, the novel initiative is going to send specially
designed Internet cycle carts to their homes directly. This project was ideated on the sidelines of
the Indian Prime Minister’s call for making India completely digital. In this
project, Tata Trusts and Google India have roped in known computer and laptop processor
chip maker Intel to provide the content for the content for the Internet
training. Intel is already helping Google India in rolling out the Helping
Women Get Online (HWGO) initiative. Tata Trusts is going to make use of its
rural support network to build the case and carry forward the novel scheme in
different parts of the country.
Modus Operandi
The Internet carts in the form of cycles would be sent to
villages for a minimum period of two days every week over a period of 4-to-6
months. During this time, the Internet carts will be visiting a cluster of 3 villages
every week to provide comprehensive basic training on the benefits and usages
of the Internet. Once the carts complete
the Internet training in one cluster of villages, it would move to another
adjacent cluster to start the training cycle in fresh location. This initiative
is set to pick up from Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state Gujarat.
Then, the Internet carts are set to fan
out to the adjacent states such as Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand in
the first phase. In the later phase, it is set to cover a total of 4500
villages to impart basic training to over 5,00,000 Indian women living in rural
India.
