Intel marketing veteran John McClure likes to tell the story of an unschooled Indian farmer who wanted to catch and store rain to water his crops but didn't know how to go about it.
The farmer's daughter figured out a way by researching the subject at an Internet-equipped community center in their village after school hours and helped him design a "rain-harvesting solution," he said.
That's a simple example of how technology can improve the lives of the 700 million mostly illiterate people who live in India's vast hinterland, McClure said.
PHOTO: AP
The executive is at the helm of an Intel effort to take computers to the country's 650,000 villages.
"We are focused on getting as deep inside India as possible," the South Asia marketing director said in an interview in the northern Indian desert city of Jaipur.
"It's a frontier we do want to conquer while not missing anything in between," added the 38-year-old.
The world's largest microchipmaker, whose products power eight out of 10 computers sold globally, has tied up with state governments and Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services (IL&FS) in a program to spread computer literacy in the countryside.
support
Intel, which also unveiled a portable personal computer designed for school children Saturday, will provide technology support, educational content and wireless connectivity to 100,000 rural community centers over the next year.
It will also help lay a broadband network across rural India and develop local-language Internet content.
But the rural push is not driven by a sense of charity.
Intel is betting that children in the villages who experience first-hand the benefits of technology will buy a computer when they grow up and take up a job or go into business.
"There's an altruistic element to it but there's also a business element," McClure said. "By investing in these areas -- maybe ahead of the curve -- we will pull more users into the PC purchasing market faster."
India's villages are home to 70 percent of its billion-plus population, yet their contribution to national economic output has declined over the past two decades to as low as 20 percent from more than half.
countryside
The countryside is yet to receive its share of the dividend from an investment, spending and technology-led economic boom that has produced nine percent growth rates for each of the past three years.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's Congress party-led government, which came to power in 2004, is trying to change that by pumping money into rural infrastructure and boosting bank loans.
"To address inclusive growth is incredibly important for the Indian economy to keep growing at a healthy clip," McClure said. "Making technology available in rural areas is a critical element of that."
loans
ICICI Bank, India's largest private bank, is giving computer loans to customers identified by Intel's dealerships while it expands lending in the countryside.
Vijay Chandok, a senior ICICI executive responsible for financing small and medium businesses, said that his clients are benefitting from economic growth and depending on technology to boost their prospects.
"The small guy needs technology to make his business easier, faster and more efficient," Chandok said. "Equipment finance is a key proposition here."
base
India's installed computer base is just 30 million, small for the second-most populous nation in a world where 1 billion PCs have been sold, said R. Ravichandran, South Asia sales director at Intel.
The market in the year ended March grew to 6.34 million units -- up from 5 million the previous year -- and may rise to 9 million by 2009, according to industry estimates.
Intel is doing its bit to boost computer sales in India, where it has invested US$1 billion and hired 3,000 engineers, by promoting computer literacy at schools and catching users early.
It developed the so-called "classmate PC" targeted at schools in the cities in partnership with Indian computer-maker HCL.
"We are helping the country in an area that's extremely important and at the same time, it's a very, very long-term investment for us," said Rahul Bedi, Intel's South Asia corporate affairs director. "We believe that unless you have social relevance built into business processes, you can't sustain them."
Right-wing political scientist Laura Fernandez on Sunday won Costa Rica’s presidential election by a landslide, after promising to crack down on rising violence linked to the cocaine trade. Fernandez’s nearest rival, economist Alvaro Ramos, conceded defeat as results showed the ruling party far exceeding the threshold of 40 percent needed to avoid a runoff. With 94 percent of polling stations counted, the political heir of outgoing Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves had captured 48.3 percent of the vote compared with Ramos’ 33.4 percent, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal said. As soon as the first results were announced, members of Fernandez’s Sovereign People’s Party
MORE RESPONSIBILITY: Draftees would be expected to fight alongside professional soldiers, likely requiring the transformation of some training brigades into combat units The armed forces are to start incorporating new conscripts into combined arms brigades this year to enhance combat readiness, the Executive Yuan’s latest policy report said. The new policy would affect Taiwanese men entering the military for their compulsory service, which was extended to one year under reforms by then-president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) in 2022. The conscripts would be trained to operate machine guns, uncrewed aerial vehicles, anti-tank guided missile launchers and Stinger air defense systems, the report said, adding that the basic training would be lengthened to eight weeks. After basic training, conscripts would be sorted into infantry battalions that would take
EMERGING FIELDS: The Chinese president said that the two countries would explore cooperation in green technology, the digital economy and artificial intelligence Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday called for an “equal and orderly multipolar world” in the face of “unilateral bullying,” in an apparent jab at the US. Xi was speaking during talks in Beijing with Uruguayan President Yamandu Orsi, the first South American leader to visit China since US special forces captured then-Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro last month — an operation that Beijing condemned as a violation of sovereignty. Orsi follows a slew of leaders to have visited China seeking to boost ties with the world’s second-largest economy to hedge against US President Donald Trump’s increasingly unpredictable administration. “The international situation is fraught
GROWING AMBITIONS: The scale and tempo of the operations show that the Strait has become the core theater for China to expand its security interests, the report said Chinese military aircraft incursions around Taiwan have surged nearly 15-fold over the past five years, according to a report released yesterday by the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Department of China Affairs. Sorties in the Taiwan Strait were previously irregular, totaling 380 in 2020, but have since evolved into routine operations, the report showed. “This demonstrates that the Taiwan Strait has become both the starting point and testing ground for Beijing’s expansionist ambitions,” it said. Driven by military expansionism, China is systematically pursuing actions aimed at altering the regional “status quo,” the department said, adding that Taiwan represents the most critical link in China’s
RSS