[Reader-list] welcome to the Sarai reader list

[Arun Mehta]

Hi,
I assume you have a copy of the excellent Sarai reader, possibly even wrote 
for it. In my view, it would be useful to all of us to discuss the 
individual contributions, and also use the opportunity to engage with the 
Sarai programme and mandate.

I mailed the following to some of you, to whom I apologise for the 
duplication. Since then we have had a couple of good meetings on the 
subjects raised below, which I will report on in a subsequent message. In 
the mean time, please do feel free to discuss these and other matters of 
mutual interest...

Arun
__
I have several suggestions for what Sarai might do, in which I could help:
         a: How about a training course for activists (anyone familiar with 
the Midwest Academy in the US, which is basically dedicated to training 
activists?). We could call some of the better activists in India, and funds 
permitting, international ones too. The class could be given a concrete 
project from day one, so that it retains a practical focus. Suggestions for 
a project might be to get the ban on Net telephony lifted, or that on 
community-based short-range FM radio stations.
         b: I am CTO in a company (in which the only other employee is the 
CEO, Vickram Crishna of Mumbai -- you can imagine it was fairly recently 
started) called Radiophony, and we have been asked by Stephen Hawking to 
develop a speech synthesizer for him -- his old one is DOS-based, and far 
from state of the art. We are not getting paid for this, but see a 
possibility for getting some funding at the right time. Not only would it 
be an honour to help this great man in any way, but the software could be 
useful to people with a variety of disabilities. We of course want this to 
be open-source, and would like to develop this on SourceForge. Would your 
Linux lot be interested in collaborating in this?
         c: Inspired by Ravi's "Recycling Modernity" (which I will react to 
in more detail when Ravi has settled down in the US and is able to take the 
time to interact on this), may I suggest a project to see how our technical 
inputs might help add value to the efforts of the people involved in the 
gray market, particularly those who recycle computer parts. For instance, a 
simple box with an IDE port on one end and a USB port on the other could 
convert old hard disks into valuable movable storage devices, or cheaper 
internal devices (such as CD writers) into mobile external ones. Another 
instance: there is plenty of waste in old circuit boards, because nobody 
has the manual any more to determine settings, or people cannot properly 
recognise what the board is. In such cases, often ICs and other valuable 
components are simply ripped off the board, fetching the kabariwalla far 
less than if the board were sold as a whole. If we put our minds to it, we 
could really make a difference here without needing to get too caught up 
with the process.
         d: I too am unhappy with the situation we find ourselves in, in 
which the IT domain is limited to the elites. The Socy. for Telecom 
Empowerment is working on a proposal with the Salaam Balak Trust to set up 
a training institute for street children in IT (see attached note, which is 
still being worked on). During the open software panel, I had asked if the 
Linux lot would help develop a training course for the NIIT/Aptech style of 
semi-literate graduates (no offence meant here to those coming from those 
institutes, but I suspect that those who did become accomplished 
programmers out of their alumni learnt most of what they know by 
themselves). This course should be based not on the traditional, 
hierarchical system of teaching, but on cooperative learning in the Linux 
pattern. Perhaps such an intensive course for training programmers could 
also take in those of the street children which our basic course identifies 
as having a particular bent towards programming.
         e: A study of law as it is applied in Indian cyberspace or IT 
professionals, and what might be done to improve the situation.