The Hindu : National : Manmohan to launch Village Resource Centre project

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Oct 14, 2004

National

National

Manmohan to launch Village Resource Centre project

By Our Special Correspondent

CHENNAI, OCT. 13. The Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, will inaugurate a Village Resource Centre project aimed at providing area-specific information to people, on October 18 inNew Delhi.

The project functions on a Very Small Aperture Terminal network. To start with, there will be nodes at Thiruvaiyaru, Thankatchimadam, Sempatti and Chennai. The nodes could be extended using wi-fi, wireless or optical fibre technology. These extensions could serve as local clusters around the areas of the resource centre.

Established by the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) and Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), the project will meet the basic needs of the rural people in education, health, nutrition, drinking water and irrigation. The central node will be located at the MSSRF office. Persons at one node can interact with others through video and audio links. A Press Information Bureau release says that by blending information derived from satellites, area-specific information on risk and vulnerability-related information could be made available to communities.

The ISRO-MSSRF partnership was formed to disseminate a variety of services emanating from space systems and other information technology tools to address the changing and critical needs of rural communities.

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