Hole in the wall opens village window

From Almora to Kanyakumari, there’s a computer revolution brewing. Having swept through urban India, the IT wave has taken a paradigm s...

From Almora to Kanyakumari, there’s a computer revolution brewing. Having swept through urban India, the IT wave has taken a paradigm shift: the target is the huge catchment area of rural India’s semi-literate youngsters who could have their lives turned around.

An experiment that started in 1999 with a computer kiosk being installed in a hole in the wall in a South Delhi slum, to see how underprivileged children adapted to IT, has become a Rs 10-crore project by education major NIIT.

It has started setting up 108 such kiosks, with touch-screen computers, throughout rural India as an experiment in education, in partnership with the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank’s lending arm. The joint venture, in which IFC provides Rs 7.5 crore and NIIT the balance and also Intellectual Property, is, appropriately, called The Hole in The Wall Company.

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The first hole in the wall kiosk outside Delhi — in Sindhudurg — was inaugurated last April by A P J Abdul Kalam, before he became President. Since then, 60 kiosks have been installed in places as far apart as Almora, Sindhudurg, Shivpuri and Pallam, near Kanyakumari.

Next up are Rajasthan and the eastern states. The results have been encouraging: children and adults thronging the kiosks and moving forward on internet learning. In fact, NIIT has already concluded that all model primary schools should have computer kiosks just as they have a playground.

There’s an even larger idea behind the experiment: its results will help the World Bank decide new trends in education among rural children in developing countries.

The success has confirmed a strong belief, says NIIT’s Chief Operating Officer P Rajendran: Children adapt to IT education even if they come from the weaker sections of society. ‘‘And, consequently, there’s a need to push IT education in all sectors.’’

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The project is based on three hypotheses, says Dr Sugata Mitra, head of NIIT’s R&D Centre for Research in Cognitive Systems: ‘‘To see if the hole in the wall is replicable in different ethnic, socio-economic and linguistic backdrops across the length and breadth of India; whether the technology adopted could survive the climatic conditions in the country and if this kind of education helps in any objective other than computer literacy like learning English.’’

The success has prompted others to pitch in, says Mitra. ‘‘At Sindhudurg, ICICI Bank gave Rs 30 lakh for the kiosk. In Delhi, the government has invested Rs 70 lakh to replicate the Kalkaji model at Madangir.’’