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Giving villages a voice
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His mantra of cost-effectiveness and innovation rules everywhere. For instance, when they needed a power back-up system for the corDECT system, ``we searched everywhere and realised that the cheapest and most effective batteries came from emergency lamps''.
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He works from the third floor of a building in IIT. The large windows in his rather bare office are sans glasses, letting in a stream of ideas. A small wall-unit that connects to his telephone and the Internet symbolises him and his mission to connect 200 million households in India. Ashok Jhunjhunwala, head, Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT, downloads his life and work to Feroze Ahmed.
HE IS best defined by his passion: To connect all of rural India. Using corDECT wireless in local loop (WLL) technology, his effort has already provided low-cost telephone and Internet connections to a number of villages. Compact web kiosks with phone and internet connections, multimedia computers, local language software and power back-up are installed in villages for just Rs. 40,000, encouraging self-employment and opening up a range of lifestyle options.
``The Internet is empowering,'' says Dr.Jhunjhunwala. He believes the kiosks will tempt villagers to computers, interest them in basic e-skills, and eventually lay the road to e- governance. ``Maybe we can get job works done from the villages itself; that will reduce migrations to urban areas. But my dream is that no villager has to queue up in Government offices. Imagine if a pensioner can just log on to a computer and get her work done.'' Technology makes no sense unless it benefits the poor.
An IIT-Kanpur alumnus, Dr.Jhunjhunwala returned to India in 1981 after a teaching stint in the US. As faculty and now head of the Department of Electrical Engineering in IIT-Madras, he has extended boundaries in communications research.
The 49-year-old academician has a series of awards on his shelf, the latest being the Padma Shri for his contribution in communications. Another award that seems dear to him is the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award, presented him in 1998. Add to other awards the six patents to his credit.
After all this, he has a defining reason for his fixation with the masses: ``we believe we are the best, inferiors to no one. So, we should give back our best.'' His early days were spent working on people-oriented technology with various science associations. Today, he does that as head of Telecommunications and Computer Networks Group (TeNet), an IIT initiative. ``TeNet has a two-fold mission: To make India a design house in technology, and link the country with 200 million telephone and Internet connections,'' he says. His group recognised early that the mission could not be achieved without investing research in low-cost technology. TeNet came up with the corDECT WLL model as a solution. It costs only Rs. 7,000 for a wall set that provides simultaneous telephone and high-speed internet connectivity, with built-in power backup and an antennae.
While recurring and installation costs are kept to a minimum, the business model - adopted from success of PCOs and cable TV operators - encourages usage and promotes entrepreneurship. To make the network sustainable, locals are trained in operations and maintenance. ``Typically, these entrepreneurs are diploma holders or even candidates who have failed in their 10th standard exams.''
The corDECT model is marketed by n-Logue, a business venture promoted by TeNet. ``We had been talking too long about connecting rural areas. Someone had to actually implement it,'' says the professor. ``It's a profit-oriented venture,'' but works only in rural areas.
TeNet is also incubating related ventures, mostly by ex- IITians drawn to the mission. Midas and Banyan, two such companies, are already making inroads into communications technology. Another one, Chennai Kavigal, specialises in local language software that is used in n-Logue's web kiosks. Proudly, Dr.Jhunjhunwala says, ``the company has developed a basic software similar to Microsoft in three local languages. And it costs only Rs. 2000.''
His mantra of cost-effectiveness and innovation rules everywhere. For instance, when they needed a power back-up system for the corDECT system, ``we searched everywhere and realised that the cheapest and most effective batteries came from emergency lamps''.
Obviously, mathematics is a passion. He even wrote a book, Vedic Mathematics, which was inspired by a carpenter who beat him to the answer in a calculation. ``When I came here, I brought back with me a lot of books. I needed a custom-made shelf. The carpenter calculated the cost in just two minutes, while I was still halfway. I thought it a fluke so asked him for another assessment. But he still beat me." `Here I was, considering myself an expert in maths, and this illiterate person doing calculations in one-fourth the time I took.'' It was a system used by all carpenters.
That and other similar incidents set him on an exploration into alternative, indigenous mathematics - ``there's a whole body of Indian knowledge that we have forgotten'' - and from there to the book. Dr.Jhunjhunwala is from Calcutta, but he was tempted to Chennai from the US by a friend and then IIT director, P.V.Indiresan, who wrote him ``a very nice letter''. He's been here ever since. ``This is my home now.''
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Life
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
Madurai
Thiruvananthapuram
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