Despite its IT credentials, India has failed to match up in content creation
for electronic and digital media, particularly in the field of science and
entertainment, according to the Digital Empowerment Foundation. The foundation
has started the Manthan Award, an initiative of recognizing the best e-content
practices across the country in categories such as: health, business, culture,
science, entertainment, learning, governance, and inclusion.
For the year 2005, the award recognized 27 practitioners from all across the
country in eight categories: e-business, e-culture, e-science, e-entertainment,
e-health, e-inclusion, e-learning, and e-governance. All of the 27 winners were
handed over trophies in respective categories at a function in New Delhi.
However, the fact is, there is very little content being generated in India-leave
alone the local languages, even in English the content situation is not good.
Osama Manzar, chairman of Manthan Award, in his opening speech said,
"Anyone going around the country will discover that there lies enough
content to be recognized and generated in this country. We just want to inspire
and create a culture of motivation in this country." The need of the hour,
he said, is to motivate those in content practices at the lower level, in small
towns and cities.
The
award's processes revealed some important pointers: which states are creating
digital content proactively and what sectors are getting maximum attention of
the content creaters. For example, out of 104 nominations, 25% nominations came
in the e-governance sector, followed by e-learning with 23%. E-science and
e-entertainment categories attracted very low percentage of nominations. And out
of the 21 states that participated in the award for best e-content practices,
80% of the nominations came from Gujarat, Karnataka, Maharashtra, and Delhi.
Well-known personalities from the country's development field were present
as guests of honours. The list included: S Shiva Kumar, the man behind ITC's
e-choupal initiatives and Prof Anil Gupta, the man behind Honeybee network
working from IIM-Ahmedabad courtyards. According to Shiva Kumar, there are a
series of constraints and challenges to brave against, to complement e-content
with economic boom in the country. He focused on the need to connect content
with resource and resourcefulness in the country, especially for rural India.
|
"Good ideas do not come to intelligent and intellectuals alone. They can
even come to ordinary people," said Anil Gupta. Gupta also pointed out that
e-content is missing in local languages in this country, which is a very
problematic condition, while sharing local knowledge and innovations.
Member
of Parliament Sachin Pilot praised the winners for coming out with noble ideas
in e-content for common man's benefit. "It is a nice experience to see
people coming out with ideas and translating them into real products,"
Pilot stated. And he promised to strive to have all the MPs and MLAs to have a
portal of their area as soon as possible.