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The Path of least Resistance
Sidin Vadukut
Many of the nominees and winners have used the mobile phone in fantastic ways to deliver change. One nominee has a voice enabled ERP system that can help farmers interact with contractors more efficiently. Another nominee has created a system to obtain, fill and submit college admission application forms purely using the mobile. Still others have created banking platforms that liberate remote rural inhabitants from financial stasis
Being a jury member of the inaugural mBillionth awards was an experience that left me with a lot of hope. Even more so than perhaps the Manthan Awards, the mBillionth nominees showcased how bridging the digital divide was not only possible, but also life changing for so many people in so many countries in the region. And how the lifecycle of some of these projects from idea to pilot to scale could now be measured in weeks and not years.
There is a tendency to look at initiatives like the Digital Empowerment Foundation, the Manthan Awards and the mBillionth awards and think that the problems these movements are trying to solve are not primary ones. DEF does not give free food away, Manthan does not build homes for the homeless, and the mBillionth winners aren’t children needing schools.
This is a justifiable perspective. Like governments tend to do cyclically, you could advocate a helicopter approach to social change: throw food, cash and clothes from the sky and hope it reaches people. There is no institution building here, merely tactical responses to systematic problems. To use a cricketing analogy, this is like coping with lack of local pace bowling talent by laying only dead pitches.
The mBillionth Awards are about building sustainable, institutionalized solutions to long-standing social and business issues. How can a farmer get his produce to market? How does he know what are the right prices? Is there a storm coming? Should he be thinking of selling as soon as possible? Or hold? Has the local school opened? Can he send his children there? But what if he can’t write? Who will fill the form?
You can’t throw education, sustainable income or livelihoods out of a helicopter.
Which is where the mobile phone comes in. The mBillionth awards recognize people who have looked at the mobile phone as more than a communication device. Many of the nominees and winners have used the mobile phone in fantastic ways to deliver change. One nominee has a voice enabled ERP system that can help farmers interact with contractors more efficiently. Another nominee has created a system to obtain, fill and submit college admission application forms purely using the mobile. Still others have created banking platforms that liberate remote rural inhabitants from financial stasis.
The phone, the awards reveal, are an institution unto themselves.
The ideas are innovative, implementable and realistic. People can and will use them. Around half the population in India have mobile phones, five times as many as the people who have access to toilets. For this reason alone the mBillionth Awards is an award that recognizes not the ‘ideal’ but the ‘realistic’. Many of these winners will change lives, some will make money and all of them will inspire future innovators.
Also helping the mBillionth movement will be some of the inherent benefits of the mobile platform. First of all mobile solutions are scalable. One tower extends connectivity to hundreds. Second, mobile applications and solutions have become cheaper to design and develop, especially in comparison to computer-based apps. This opens up the field for many small and one-person operations. (In fact one of the winners this year is a one-man team.)
Thirdly, regional collaboration will help spread good mobile ideas. With various nations in the region at various points on the mobile technology curve, there is tremendous scope for collaboration.
Fourthly, the learning curve for final adopters is not steep. They don’t need to sit in a computer institute, own a wired Internet connection, or learn a foreign language. Most of the mBillionth projects need no greater sophistication than the ability to make a call or send an SMS.
Finally, unlike conventional computer-based empowerment, the mobile platform does not need governments to extend themselves extensively. There is no need to pull wires, provide computers and maintain hardware. Mobile phones are easy to obtain, easy to hook to the network, cheap to repair, or even replace.
The learning curve for final adopters is not steep. They don’t need to sit in a computer institute, own a wired Internet connection, or learn a foreign language. Most of the mBillionth projects need no greater sophistication than the ability to make a call or send an SMS
For all these reasons mobile digital empowerment is a revolution waiting to happen. The mBillionth Awards are the first salvo in this uprising. The future is bright. Perhaps what we need to drop from helicopters is not rice, or clothes or cash. But mobile phones!
Sidin Vadukut is author of “Dork: The Incredible
Adventures of Robin “Einstein” Varghese” who has sold more than 20,000 copies. He is also managing editor of LIVEmint. He can be reached at sidin.vadukut@gmail.com
The ideas are innovative, implementable and realistic. People can and will use them. Around half the population in India have mobile phones, five times as many as the people who have access to toilets. For this reason alone the mBillionth Awards is an award that recognizes not the ‘ideal’ but the ‘realistic’. Many of these winners will change lives, some will make money and all of them will inspire future innovators
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