|
══════════════════【立報】═══════════════════ |
| 教 育 專 題 深 入 報 導《2005-08-26》 |
| 本期內容 | |
| ◎ e進印度鄉間 科技沒有距離 | |
| ◎ 收入增加 科技保障婦女未來 | |
| ◎ 台灣立報徵文啟事 | |
| e進印度鄉間 科技沒有距離 | |
| 策劃、編譯■成怡夏 | |
|
India bypasses the wires to bring Wi-Fi to its remote resi-dents 摘要 3年前，若你在印度南部的葩拉寇德村，想要繳交電費帳單得花上一天的工夫，由於當地的郵政服務並不可靠，付賬單還是得自己跑一趟，不過這得付出幾十英哩的腳程，以及冗長的排隊等候時間。 今日，葩拉寇德村的村民不用跑那麼遠了，他們可以去穆罕默德．哈倫先生家裡。哈倫先生並不是在電力公司上班──他，負責該村阿卡莎亞中心運作，那是一間有5台電腦的房間，裡面提供無線上網的設備，當地居民可以在那裡搜尋網站、上電腦課程，當然也可以上網付帳單。 透過該地區中心一座信號塔，葩拉寇德村努力將無線網路的涵蓋範圍到村里最遠的地方。 由於無線網路科技的發展，網路普遍化成為幾個開發中國家可以達成的目標，印度也包括在內。印度的目標是把像葩啦寇德村那樣的「村莊知識中心」，在兩年內擴展到全國60萬個村莊。 「世界上大部分的鄉間地區，從未有過線路──至少沒有處理頻寬的線路。」世界資源組織數位贊助計劃（World Resources Institute's Digital Divi-dends program）執行長艾倫‧漢蒙德說：「在美國鄉間如此，印度鄉間、非洲鄉間以及東歐鄉間也是如此。」 這裡運用的技術絕大部分與美國餐館、大學和住家所使用的Wi-Fi網路只有少許不同，最大的不同就是它的範圍──許多依賴無線電台的信號塔和天線傳遞信號，可傳送距離最遠可達20英哩──而其得面臨的惡劣狀況通常包括了不穩定的電力供給，以及荒涼的地形。不過，隨著相關的設備價格快速滑落，無線網路就像行動電話一樣，在解決開發中國家城鄉數位落差問題上，扮演了大有可為的角色。 「每一天，打開報紙，你會看到關於資訊科技的新聞。」非營利組織「任務2007」的執行長貝詩海莫德‧沙達奇表示：「所以，印度鄉間不能自外於資訊社會，這樣才會進步，並且受惠於資訊發展。」 沙達奇和「任務2007」其他領袖都希望，民眾可以透過與政府官員的e化電信會議，向政府陳情，也可以在網路上設計一些行銷工具，讓農夫取得買賣穀物較佳價格的相關資訊。印度科技大學阿壽克．君皇瓦拉教授領導的一個研究團隊，則在開發鄉間提款機，與一種醫生身在遠處卻可以透過聽診器或是心電圖，接收到資料的低價醫療診斷配備。 在n-Logue通信公司的案例中，君皇瓦拉團隊設計出一種收費的公共涼亭接線生服務，每一個涼亭連結站需要投資1千2百美元──不只電腦和軟體的費用，還包括數位相機、印表機、電力和無線上網連結費用。目前，大部分n-Logue的涼亭連結速度與在美國的電話撥接速度差不多。而麥德司通訊專門為鄉間地區設計的無線上網儀器設備，速度為撥接的4倍。 儘管n-Logue和幾個通信公司都想證明把網路延伸到鄉間地區是有利可圖的，但是「任務2007」的工作則是要讓印度從目前大約一萬個鄉間網路中心，在兩年內擴展到幾十萬個。不過，即使是沙達奇也明白，2007年8月前60萬個村莊無法全數完成無線上網的工程──雖然他還是說，在23萬7千個較大的村莊設置通訊中心是可能的。 不過，最大的挑戰可能還不是在技術層面，而是語言層面的問題，這樣的服務也必須提供社區動機去使用網路。舉例來說，在馬拉普蘭，一項由加州柏克萊大學教授所做的研究發現，由阿卡莎亞中心發出的連結訊息只有5％是連結到e化電子政務和教育部門。某些鄉間科技專家，如阿莫達貝德印度管理學院教授阿尼爾‧顧沛塔就質問，假如人們不會說英文，網路是否應當放在第一順位發展？ 「我們發現網路並不是未來5年我們可以探觸到印度村莊的途徑，用當地語言搜尋Google並閱讀內容，除非是這樣才可行，我們在做法上必須有所調整。」他說。 （資料來源／基督教科學箴言報） 原文 PALAKKODE, INDIA - Three years ago, paying the electric bill in the south Indian village of Palakkode was a day-long task. With unreliable postal service, bills are paid in person. That means a trip of several miles, per-haps on foot, and a wait in line. Today, the citizens of Palakkode go to Muhammed Harroon. Mr. Harroon does not work for the electric company - he runs the village's Akshaya center, a room with five computers hooked wirelessly to the Internet, where local citizens can surf the Web, take comput-er-literacy courses, and pay their bills electronically. Relying on a signal transmitted from a tower in the center of the district, Palakkode is at the forefront of ef-forts to use wireless technology to cover the last mile - or in many cases, the last several miles - separating rural villages from landline networks. The technology is making universal Internet access an attainable goal in several developing countries, in-cluding India. The country aims to spread "village knowledge centers" like the one in Palakkode to the country's 600,000 villages within two years. "For most of the rural parts of the world, they are nev-er going to run a wire - at least not one that's going to handle a significant bandwidth," says Allen Hammond, the director of the World Resources Institute's Digital Dividends program. "That's true in the rural US ... as it's true in rural India, rural Africa, and rural Eastern Eu-rope." The technology being used is, for the most part, little different from the Wi-Fi networks that have become popular in US cafes, universities, and homes. The biggest difference is their range - many rely on radio towers and antennas to extend signals as far as 20 miles at a time - and the conditions under which they are de-ployed, which often include unreliable power supplies or inhospitable terrain. But with the cost of equipment falling quickly, wireless Internet, like mobile phones, is increasingly earning attention as a promising solution to close the technology gap between urban and rural areas in the developing world by removing the need for ex-pensive investments in new cables. "Every day, you open the newspaper, and you see something about ?information technology," says Basheerhamad Shadrach, the executive director of Mis-sion 2007, the consortium of business, NGO, and gov-ernment leaders behind the village hook-up drive. "Ru-ral India should be participating in an information soci-ety in order to benefit itself." Mr. Shadrach and the other leaders of Mission 2007 hope those benefits will range from e-governance - tele-conferencing with government officials to submit grievances, for example - to marketing tools that allow farmers to receive better prices for their crops. A group headed by Ashok Jhunjhunwala, a professor at the Indi-an Institute of Technology-Madras, is experimenting with products like a rural ATM and a low-cost medi-cal-diagnostics kit that allows a doctor to receive data remotely from a stethoscope or an electrocardiograph. In the case of n-Logue, a for-profit kiosk operator spun off from Dr. Jhunjhunwala's group, setting up a connection requires an investment of about $1,200 per kiosk - which includes not only the computer and its software, but a digital camera, a printer, a back-up source of power, and a connection to a wireless net-work. So far, most n-Logue kiosks operate at a speed e-quivalent to a dial-up connections in the US. But Midas Communications is now selling equipment designed for rural areas that can link kiosks to broadband wireless at speeds more than four times faster than dial-up. Yet while n-Logue and several other efforts have shown that connecting rural villages to the Internet can be affordable and even profitable, Mission 2007's task is to demonstrate whether India can go from an estimated 10,000 rural Internet centers to a few hundred thousand in two years. Even Shadrach acknowledges that not all 600,000 villages will be wired by the targeted date of August 2007 - although he maintains that setting up centers in the 237,000 villages large enough to have an official village council, is realistic. The biggest challenge may not be technological, but linguistic, and developing services that give rural com-munities reasons to use the Internet. In Malappuram, for example, a study by professors at the University of Cali-fornia, Berkeley, found that just 5 percent of the traffic from the Akshaya centers related to e-governance or ed-ucation. Some experts on rural technology, like Anil Gupta, a professor at the Indian Institute of Manage-ment, Ahmedabad, question whether the Internet should be a priority, if people don't speak English. "We find that the Internet is not the technology through which we will reach villages in the country in the next five years," Dr. Gupta says. "Look up Google and find the content we have in local languages.... Un-less that happens, how can we justify what we are do-ing?" |
|
| （回目錄） | |
| 收入增加 科技保障婦女未來 | |
| 策劃、編譯■成怡夏 | |
|
Technology Trans-forms Rural Women 摘要 25歲的拉塔過去只是印度中部地區一個小村落的家庭主婦，當然她也要工作貼補家用，不過她是個文盲，又沒有工作經驗，她的丈夫也不希望她出外和陌生男人一起工作。 然而今日的拉塔一個月賺一千盧比（美金一元等於47.5盧比），她每天在村莊中心使用最先進的科技產品，調製醬油、果醬、果汁和各種醃菜，工作時間一天3到4小時。她的丈夫對她的收入也很滿意，因為這費薪水保障了穩固的未來。 就像拉塔一樣，印度中部的查哈提斯開和印度東部的阿可漢德2千5百個村落、超過30萬個家庭的男男女女，都受惠於農村改造的科技應用計劃（Science and Technology Applied for Rural Transformation，START）。這項計劃由聯合國發展規劃（United Na-tions Development Programme，UNDP）發起，使用簡單卻恰當的科技協助社會發展。 START透過科技發展中心和資源中心的網絡運作。舉例來說，在馬德亞帕德西，地區研究實驗室（Re-gional Research Laboratory，RRL）就成為科技中心，而當地非營利組織則提供資源中心的空間。每一個科技中心則進一步發展為較小型的非營利組織和當地婦女主導之自助團體的網絡，以執行這項計劃。這項計劃是在印度政府科技部門的指導下進行。 「我們堅信社會發展是在人們肚皮填飽後開始的，」RRL的莫西博士說：「這項計劃實現了兩個巒生的目標，一是大量運用這個地區的自然資源，另一個是使用科技作為提昇競爭機會的工具。」 一開始，他們就村莊的資源和公共設施來著手，當地非營利組織訓練村民著手進行調查，了解一地的農產量、農田規模、家戶數目、牛隻和當地水井的數目。這些資訊之後紀錄到印度科技研究院的地理資訊系統（GIS）軟體，以作為繪製印度村莊資源地圖的預備。莫西博士說，這些地圖成本低、準確度高，不只作為計劃繪製地圖之用，也是政府制定福利藍圖時的重要依據。 基於以上訊息，當地科技中心裝備了訓練工具以讓村莊裡的資源獲得最大的收益，因此對當地人口進行了永續的職業訓練。拉塔就是在這樣的情況下接受訓練。她居住的地區有豐富產量的蕃茄、橘子、辣椒、胡蘿蔔和其他時令果菜，過去A級和B級的水果由盤商挑去後，低品質的產品就任其爛掉。現在，科技發展中心會買下所有的產品。 拉塔和其他婦女受訓使用機器調製食品，並攪拌準備果汁、醃菜和果醬。 科技資源中心也推廣種植藥用和芳香植物，低成本的溫室、蘑菇栽培和家禽養殖。有些START中心也發展製作衛生紙巾，在有些地區惡劣的月經相關保健條件導致鄉間和原住民婦女病的盛行，因此消毒過的衛生紙巾是非常重要的必需品。 資源中心也有逐漸變成諮詢與服務中心的趨勢，許多會員常在那裡討論並解決問題。小型銀行也出現在某幾個中心內，還有人在中心擔任兼職教師。（資料來源／indiatogether.org） 原文 Hoshangabad, (WFS) - Lata (25) used to be just another housewife in a small village in Hoshangabad district, Madhya Pradesh (central India). She wanted to work to supplement her family income, but she was illiterate, inex-perienced and her husband didn't want her to go out among strangers, especially men. Today Lata earns Rs 1,000 (US$1=Rs 47.5) a month. She works three to four hours every day processing sauces, jams, juices and pickles using modern machines installed at the village centre. Her husband is happy too as her in-come promises them a secure future. Like Lata, women and men from more than 300,000 families in 2,500 villages of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh (central India) and Jharkhand (eastern India) have benefit-ed from the Science and Technology Applied for Rural Transformation (START) project. Initiated by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the project us-es simple but appropriate technology for social develop-ment. START operates through a network of technology de-velopment centres and resource centres. For example, in Madhya Pradesh, the Regional Research Laboratory (RRL) in Bhopal acts as the technology centre, while local block-level NGOs offer space for resource centres. Each technology centre develops a network of smaller NGOs and women-dominated self-help groups (SHGs) to imple-ment the project. The project is executed under the guid-ance of the Department of Science and Technology, Gov-ernment of India. "We strongly believe that social develop-ment is possible only when people's stomachs are full," says Dr M V R L Murthy from RRL. "This project fulfils the twin objectives of productively using the natural re-sources of the region and using technology as an enabling tool to enhance opportunities." Initially, a comprehensive mapping of village re-sources and infrastructure is undertaken. Local NGOs train villagers to conduct surveys indicating agricultural production of the area, farm size, number of households, cattle and wells in the region. This information is then fed into a Geographical Information System (GIS) software at the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, to prepare village resource maps. "We spent around Rs 500 for mapping each village. These low-cost precision maps are not only useful for the imple-mentation of our own projects, they are also in great de-mand for planning and execution of welfare schemes by government departments," says Dr Murthy. Based on this information, the local technology centre is equipped with training inputs to put village resources to best use, thereby creating sustainable employment oppor-tunities for the local population. Take the centre in Kesla block, Hoshangabad, where Lata works. The area has a rich produce of tomatoes, oranges, chillies, carrots and other seasonal fruits and vegetables. While the 'A' and 'B' grade produce is picked up by the market, farmers are left with a huge lower quality stock that would be left to rot. Now, this produce is bought by the technology development centres at competitive rates. Lata and other women are trained to work on food pro-cessing machines and churn out ready-to-market juices, pickles, sauces and jams. The food processing machines include pulpers, double-jacketed steam kettles (for cook-ing), pulverisers, dryers and corking machines. Each product is put through rigorous quality checks, im-plemented by SHG members themselves. 'Surbhi', their brand of pickles and other items, already has a huge de-mand in the vicinity. The Kesla centre hopes to get a li-cense to market products in urban centres. "I sell more than 30 kg of pickle every week," says Pushpa Sahu, member of the Kesla centre. "People are addicted to its taste. I earn Rs 150 every week," she adds happily. Other technology resource centres have also taken up activities like growing medicinal and aromatic plants, planting low-cost nurseries, mushroom cultivation and poultry farming. Two major activities being pursued at most centres are detergent-making and producing ver-mi-compost. While SHG members themselves use most of the vermi-compost produced at the centres, deter-gent-making has proved to be more revolutionary. Packed in small 100 gram packets, priced at Rs 2, the detergents are a big hit with local shopkeepers, tribal people and in neighbouring markets where SHG members set up tempo-rary stalls. Many START centres have also started manufacturing sanitary napkins. In a region where poor menstruation-re-lated hygiene causes mammoth health problems for rural and tribal women, the sterilised sanitary napkins (Rs 3 per pack) are an affordable necessity. A heartening trend has been use of technology centres as counselling and aid forums. Members frequently discuss and solve mutual problems as they go about their work at the centres. Small banks have also started in some centres. Each member of the Kesla centre deposits Rs 30 per month with the youngest member of the group, Manju Chauhan. The money saved is loaned at three per cent interest to members in need. Chauhan also operates as part-time teacher in the centre. START project leaders are now plan-ning to work on easy credit facilities, professional rural marketing and standardised packaging for members. They also propose to cash on the high demand of organic products in the market. They hope to make START into a self-sus-taining project. indiatogether.org |
|
| （回目錄） | |
| 台灣立報徵文啟事 | |
|
本報誠徵閱讀經驗分享，歡迎教師、家長及學生分享經驗，題材包括如何推動學生閱讀、啟發學生閱讀興趣、學生閱讀心得或小書評，文長500～1500字皆可，投至fiveguys@ms19.hinet.net，凡經採用，敬奉薄酬。 |
|
| （回目錄） | |
|
參觀立報： |
http://www.lihpao.com |
|
寫信給小編 e-mail： |
fiveguys@ms19.hinet.net |
|
立報地址： |
台北縣新店市復興路43號一樓 |
| 欲詳完整內容請訂閱立報 電話：02-86676655 傳真：02-82191213 訂報：02-86676655轉214 地址：台北縣新店市復興路43號1樓 每週一至週六出報，每份10元 |