The users of information technology are almost confined to urban areas. Needless to say this state is being changed. The world has 1.8 billion internet users and India bags the fourth position recording 81 million users. 70 percentage of Indian population are in rural sector where the users of internet have been rising to 24 million from 12.1 million in December 2010. This was disclosed by a recent survey conducted by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI. The survey says that the rising number of Net users in the rural India is due to the growing awareness about the internet and easier access. It must be noticed that the project, Sustainable Access in Rural India (SARI), as part of fast-tracking the penetration of internet use, has taken up the task to provide the facility of Public Access Internet Kiosks in rural India.
Another survey reveals that India expects 214 million broad band internet connections by 2014. India’s mobile user base has also recorded an outstanding growth of 45000 percentage from 1 million (1999) to 450 million (2009). Internet access on mobile phone has been an add-on to the total figure of internet users.
There is an endeavor to become part of the same pace of the sea change. Www.panacherynews.com, an online news portal exclusively for Pananchery Grama Panchayath (Thrissur district, the first online village news portal in the world, aims to bring about a robust IT/internet culture at village level. The modules like student’s corner, citizen journalism, agriculture etc are the main attractions of this local news portal in vernacular language.
www.panancherynews.com
Our Grama Panchayath is blessed with the educational institutions including two High Schools, Higher Secondary Schools and CBSE schools. As a dynamic platform to exchange and extend knowledge and information, panancherynews.com would promote the creativity of students by offering a vast space on web where their works will get published. Furthermore, it would be a platform to access the educational information intending to boost up the standard of education. Adapting novel methods of education and training would assist the students in updating their skills and knowledge. We are sure that the panancherynews would be a promising add-on in molding up the creative, potential and vibrant student folk that is determinant to the future of civil society.
The module, citizen journalism, aims to stimulate the power of observation of villagers on their own surroundings and it is totally attributed to the people of our grama panchayath for reporting the news and events and woes in their villages where they live and would make sure that the voice of the villagers would be heard of by the concerned authority. And it would pave an increased bottom-up participation in the governance processes.
This local level online news portal in vernacular language, www.panacherynews.com, is expected to be a strong tool in inculcating the tremendous scope of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). Its mission is to transform Pananchery Grama Panchayath into a center of resource, knowledge and information by utilizing and disseminating the optimum scope of ICTs. Our longing is to become part of transforming the rural landscape of Kerala by replicating the local online news portal like panancherynews in vernacular language in every grama panchayths in our state. Such drive would be a robust tool to pave a digital track in integrating the news and events being taken place in every village. And it would also be a direct link to make them (the policy/decision makers) understands the demands and woes of the villagers who comprise 70 percent of the population.
Instrumental to Sarkar
The administrative lethargy and procedural bottlenecks make inordinate delay in citing the issues/demands/woes of the rural people before the ministers and it is quite natural that results in public resentment against the government. A government which is very keen on retains the power in consecutive terms must not allow to raise such inauspicious political situation.
In this information age, the local online news portal like panancherynews in vernacular language would be a catalyst in cementing the constructive and healthy rapport between the government and the rural folk. And it is also a virtuous platform to publicize the governmental programmes/achievements, which will be determinant with regards to bagging votes in the elections. Here the public exchequer could also save the cores of rupees being spent against the publicity focusing governmental achievements.
Please log on to our own news portal www.panancherynews.com for further details
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