ICT for Socioeconomic Development (ICT4SD)

1. ICT for Socioeconomic Development (ICT4SD) IT 625 / M Th 6:30 to 8:00 pm http://www.it.iitb.ac.in/~it625 Course Coordinators: U. B. Desai and Krithi Ramamritham

2. Objectives • Provide exposure to the already existing benefits of ICT for the masses • ICT for social development is indeed an exciting area of research • A forum for generating ideas in this new and important domain --- we believe that no one has really cracked this domain • Motivate the younger lot to do R and D in ICT4D • Contribute to the cause through • The creation of portals • Studies • Projects

3. Course Structure • Two 1.5 hrs lectures per week • 7 to 8 weeks lectures by 7 to 8 faculty from IITB • 5 to 6 weeks (10 to 12) invited lectures from people working in the area of ICT for development • 3 weeks (9 to 10 hrs) of student presentation • At least one site visit (possibly Pabal in Maharashtra)

4. Faculty contributing to the Course • U B Desai and Krithi Ramamritham – Introduction to the course, motivation, expectations • Krithi R. – ongoing projects in KReSIT and elsewhere in IIT on ICT4D • Anirudha Joshi --- Interactive and contextual design, language interfaces • Anand Patwardhan – Policy and business models, profits at the bottom of the pyramid • Krithi R. --- Data Bases, Content Creation • U. B. Desai --- Access Technologies, rural kiosk, sustainable ICT in rural areas • Pushpak B. --- Languages technologies • Karandikar --- Networking • Ananthakrishnan -- Literacy • Dinesh Sharma --- Affordable Devices; Affordable Computing • A Q Contractor --- Bio-X • D. B. Phatak: Open Source • Invite A. W. Date (Mech.) to share experience in rural technology • Sivakumar --- Localization efforts

5. Tentative list Invited Speakers • People from ICICI bank (Nachiket) on Microfinance • Arun Mehta on Telecom Policy in India • Ashok Jhunjhunwala • SEWA – Ahmedabad • ITC – e-Choupal • M. S. Swaminathan foundation (Pondichery) • Hindustan Lever on how they have approached the rural market • Anil Gupta from IIM-Ahmedabad • Anupam Basu – IIT KGP • Ananthakrishnan -- Literacy • Kadarbhai – KVK Baramati • Yogesh Kulkarni – Vigyan Ashram • Rekha Jain from IIM-Ahm. (heads the center on telecom policy studies) • Bhoomi project in Karnataka (Maybe Mr. Rajeev Chawala) • Secretary IT – Mr. K. K. Jaswal • Group in Hyderabad – Project COW – Computers on Wheel • Some grass root workers – people who have been working in the field on ICT • Rajesh Jain (Net-core Tech.) • Zero Tech (Hiranandani –Sudershan SOM) • One Village One Computer (Navi Mumbai) • Yogesh Kulkarni (Vigyan Ashram) • Manthan Award winners • Kentaro Toyama <kentoy@microsoft.com>

6. Course Output By the end of the semester the course would have a)Created several portals, each in a specific domain, say health, education, agriculture, listing all projects going on around the world for improving the reach of ICT based solutions in those domains b)Paper and pencil exercises evaluating specific ongoing projects - both research and commercial - assessing their potential and impact c)Several practical field-oriented projects starting from requirements identification, definition of scope of project, deliverables and finally ending with a prototype deployment and preliminary evaluation. d)Conduct a workshop on "use of ICT for development" bringing representatives from different stockholder groups to get first-hand views.

7. Course requirements 1)Contribution to one of the domain portals, as per (a) 2)Contribution as a member of 1-2 person team doing a paper and pencil exercise as per (b) 3)Be a part of a 2-3 person team, as per (c), doing a field project.

8. Several byproducts of the course Documentation of grassroot level innovations in the use of ICT -Creating ontologies, say in the agriculture domain -Appraisals of ICT projects worldwide, from commercialization / sustainability angles. -New applications / opportunities for using ICT for development

9. Aim to make a difference!