[Reader-list] What are the two MITs upto in Mumbai?

[rehan ansari]

what do people think of this?
(reported in midday)

a Lab Asia in Mumbai
  By: Aquin George

 June 23, 2001

 This Sunday, the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT) Media Lab in association with the
Ministry of
 Information Technology will launch Media Lab Asia
(MLA), an ambitious 10-year effort in Mumbai to create
an
 autonomous organisation whose research will help
create innovative ways of bringing technology to the
masses.

 Where is the media lab? No one knows. This Sunday is
just the signing of the agreement with MIT. The
one-year
 exploratory programme is a step towards meeting
various challenges in the fields of education, health,
agriculture
 and enterprise with technology in both rural as well
as urban areas. To begin with, the government proposes
to
 invest Rs 65 crore in the first year. The proposed
10-year budget for the lab is $ 1 billion. Of this,
around 18 per cent
 could be government-funded. The rest is expected to
be sponsored.

 Says S Ramakrishnan, senior director and head
(education, research and technology division), "MIT
will not invest
 directly. Its contribution will be in the form of
intellectual capital, creating brand equity, help in
getting sponsors etc.
 This is essential if MLA is to succeed in its
ambition to facilitate the invention, refinement and
deployment of
 innovations that benefit the masses." While setting
up the lab will take about 48 months, the initial
works will be
 conducted out of various IIT labs. MLA with the help
of Tie and NASSCOM intends to lure about 180 sponsors.
The
 first year will see innovative ideas being short
listed following which private players will be roped
in to assist
 materialising these ideas. 

 Michael Best, a reasearch scientist with MIT's
eDevelopment group, says: "Such undertakings have been
part of MIT
 Media Labs' 15 years of existence. We have been
involved in a number of projects in countries like
Costa Rica,
 Dominican Republic, Brazil, Thailand, Cambodia and
Ghana. For example, in the Dominican Republic, we
created a
 Village Area Network (VAN). In a small fishing
village we created a mobile roaming network and helped
villagers buy
 cheap locally-assembled handheld appliances that
could be used for crop testing, understanding crop
diseases, soil
 testing etc. The network bandwidth we helped set up
was 11 MBPS, which is the same as the whole of Ghana's
 internet connectivity with the rest of the world."

 MIT Media Lab is already helping out rural markets in
Tamil Nadu in collaboration with IIT-Madras, I-Gyan
Foundation
 and Harvard's Center for International Development.
"Prior experience shows that problems in rural areas
are similar
 on many counts the world over," says Best. "Though
the one thing that really stands out is the high level
of
 population density." But this seems to be a plus
point as it could very well mean economies of scale.

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail
http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/