Mbillionth Award for Mobile Innovations in South Asia, DEF

Mobile miracle for underprivileged

Ananya Raihan

As a member of the Jury, I saw how diverse is the development endeavours and how big is the potential of deploying mobile phone-based solutions for citizens. I am happy to see that majority of the solutions will benefit the poor and marginalized people of South Asia

I frequently visit rural Bangladesh to work with grassroots organisations to introduce or experiment various kinds of services, which also includes mobile phone-based services. Recently, I showed a fellow in a remote village how he can listen to Internet radio using his mobile phone. When he could listen to the music, he jumped and hugged me and ran to his other fellows to show this ‘miracle’. Back in 2004, when the mobile phone based help line ‘Pallitathya Help Line’ was first introduced in Bangladesh, Salma, a mobile lady in remote northern district visited an ultra poor household and connected poor women with an MBBS doctor. That lady did not believe that the person at the other end was a doctor. Salma tried relentlessly to make people believe that the people on the other side of the helpline are experts. Subsequently, the expert team visited the village and Salma introduced them to the villagers and told, “Now on you can call and they will respond to your queries”. After that introduction, the service became very popular. Now, Bangladeshi expatriate workers can send money to their relatives at home, wherever they live, thanks to pro-people policy and innovations of private sector and NGOs.

The e-Content award had a category ‘mobile content’. Given the potential of mobile telecommunications, it was felt that promoting young talents and enterprises for mobile content development and solutions is very important. And ‘mBillionth Award’ came at the very right time. As a member of the Jury, I saw how diverse is the development endeavours and how big is the potential of deploying mobile phone-based solutions for citizens. I am happy to see that majority of the solutions will benefit the poor and marginalized people of South Asia. I feel proud to be associated with the endeavours.

While innovators and service providers trying to bring in new services and products for the people, whether our policy makers and regulators are able to understand and ready to facilitate them – is a big question. We need to exchange views with all stakeholders on a regular basis and get ourselves above any narrow interest. Collaboration among players in South Asia is a key.

Dr Ananya Raihan is executive director of D.Net and also a member, Digital Bangladesh Task Force. He can be reached at ananya@raihan.net