India's Digital Village Via Slashdot

Slashdot has this discussion [ India's Digital Village] about project Bhoomi covered comprehensively in Business Week by Manjeet Kripalani. Kripalani also writes about how the digitial evolution is bringing information explosion by bringing the equality in information access. Though majority of the people do not have understanding about these digital things, they have the power and ability to access the information through easily-operable devices like Kiosks. Outsiders may not understand the difference, but in India access to information is very big thing due to red-tapism and corruption. Now one doesn't have to slip in green fuel (bribe) inside the kiosks to get any information.

sirdude writes "Business Week has a pretty comprehensive story on the impact of projects such as Bhoomi, which are slowly but surely bridging the digital divide in rural India. With entrepreneurial initiatives such as e-choupal, Simputer, and a multitude of other privately-funded projects also beginning to take root, the rural Indian (who comprises about 70% of India's population), is slowly inching his way into the information age. The rest of the third world is watching & waiting, and taking detailed notes :)" And the parts about computerized land records may remind anyone who's read it of Hernando De Soto's The Mystery of Capital.

Project Bhoomi

Under this prestigious Bhoomi E-Governance project of the Government all 20 million land records of 6.7 million land owners in 176 taluks of Karnataka have been computerised. This system works with the software called "BHOOMI" designed fully in-house by National Informatics Center, Bangalore. While the project is largely funded by Government of India; some critical components of this project are funded by State Government.