Alternative for India Development (AID) actively participated in the e-India 2007 conference held at New
Delhi between 31st July – 3rd August 2007. AID is the only NGO at the
national level who has taken the task of being State Service Agency for
implementing the Government of India’s ambitious plan of setting up 1 lakh
Common service centers in the country. AID is in the process of setting up 600 CSCs (common service centres)
in Palamau division of Jharkhand state in India. It is indeed a great
challenge to usher in e – revolution in the region which is one of the
poverty bowls of India. The bureaucracy and administrators are yet to wake
up to the call of e-preparedness and getting person with minimum literacy is
an uphill task. In this scenario AID has taken the task of steering ahead
the ICT movement in the region as it sees as the only ray of hope to bring
about good governance and transparency in the region along with exploring
the full potential of marketing the rural produce to the outside markets. AID’s founder Mr.Ravi Kumar was one of the panellists in the
e-India 2007 conference. He presented the opportunities and challenges being
faced by AID in implementing this ambitious plan in the most backward
region of the country. This generated lot of interesting discussions and
threw open the floor to several discussions. IT was a contrasting situation
where within the country there was a resourceful, progressive and IT savvy
states which were steering ahead in progress and on the other end the states
like Jharkhand which has long way to steer ahead to keep pace within the
country. AID’s executive Secretary Mrs. Sunanda K.S. also participated
actively in the sessions of Telecenter Forum and Community Radio.
