The sleepy and backward Malappuram district of northern Kerala is all set to witness a cyber revolution. And major computer manufacturers will be competing with each other to grab the purchase orders for more than 6,000 units within three days from villagers there.What makes the three-day ‘‘Computer Mela’’ from February 7 enticing to the manufacturers, who have already announced several attractive offers, is the huge demand within a short span of time from such a small locality.The demand is triggered by the e-literacy campaign, titled ‘Akshaya’, launched by President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam in November last year, which is all set to enter a decisive phase of setting up 600 multi-purpose community technology centres for imparting computer training to members of six lakh-odd families in Malappuram. Each centre would be purchasing 10 computers through intense bargaining at the mela.Major companies have already informed the entrepreneurs that they were ready to offer PCs at the lowest ever price in India, apparently in a bid to capture the huge demand. This may further trigger a possible inflow of prospective buyers from other parts of the state to Malappuram.The Akshaya project has already started making an impact in the region. ‘‘Within 100 days, we will make at least one member of each family a computer-literate,’’ said Sivasankar, director of the Kerala State IT Mission, the nodal agency for the implementation of the e-literacy campaign on a pilot basis in the district.If everything goes right, Kerala will emerge as the first fully e-literate state in the country, probably the first of its kind in the world, by the end of 2004, he said, adding the Malappuram experience would be replicated in the remaining 13 districts of the state from January next year.Conceived by the Kerala Information Technology Department to bridge the digital divide in the state, and implemented through local bodies, Akshaya’s main focus is on sustained e-literacy and entrepreneurship.
