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Ente Gramam The Village Succes Story Dr.Rathan U.Kelkar
www.entegramam.gov.in
My Country…My Land…My Home! Whatever be the language they get expressed in, these invariably evoke strong sentiments and nativity feelings among humans. Wars have been waged and won to establish one possessions, over one’s own country and land. The strong feelings of kinship and bonding become all the more powerful when one is amidst a group of fellow country men or when one is away from one’s land, either by design and or by force. Providing a forum where one can speak about one’s place with pride or a forum to express, rekindle and revive nostalgic thoughts is the project ‘Entegramam’ of Kerala State IT Mission (www.itmission. kerala.gov.in), the nodal IT implementing agency of the Government of Kerala based in the capital city of Trivandrum. As the Father of the Nation, Mahatma Gandhi, rightly remarked decades back, “India lives in its villages”. This continues to be true even after sixty years of India’s Independence. Data has it that nearly 70% of the population continues to live in rural areas (Source: http://hetv.org/india/ population-2001.htm). IT for Rural Masses The 21st century India has seen the rapid diffusion of IT in various fields and applications. Consequent to this development, there was also the emerging thought among IT practitioners that the benefits of IT should not be restricted to urban and the IT-savvy people alone. It was felt that the fruits of IT should be spread to all sections of the population, including the majority living in rural areas and villages of the country. The State of Kerala, a champion in many aspects of development including literacy, has also led the country with regard to taking IT to the rural masses. A major course of action in this direction 20
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has been the implementation of the project ‘Akshaya’ in 2002 to promote eLiteracy in Kerala. The favourable results shown by the project prompted the Kerala Government to launch more ICT based projects for the empowerment of the rural masses. Villages Occupy Cyberspace Considering that the majority of India’s population lives in rural areas, it can be rightfully stated that a wealth of India’s
resources and knowledge base exist among the rural population. To ensure that these resources and knowledge get represented in a larger sphere, the Government of Kerala launched a project called Entegramam. The project aims at taking Kerala’s villages to the cyber space and give the rural population adequate representation and deserving opportunities in the present global order. The word ‘Entegramam’ in Malayalam stands to mean ‘My village’. The