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international Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Vol XXXV, Part B7. Istanbul 2004 
  
telephone lines facilitating both voice and data 
transfer, connects ten villages in the UT of 
Pondicherry. 
About half the population in these villages have 
a total family income of less than 25 US$ a month. 
The project is pro-poor, pro-women, and pro- 
environment in its conception. Community ownership 
of the technology and collective action to spread the 
use of technology is encouraged. 
Content 
The content provided is demand-driven based 
on the needs of the community. The information 
provided to the villagers is area-specific such as prices 
of agricultural inputs and outputs, market information, 
entitlements, healthcare, livestock care, transport 
information, and weather. Local volunteers, mostly 
women, gather the information, feed it into the 
intranet, and provide access through nodes in different 
villages. Value is added to the raw information by 
using the local Tamil language and multimedia. For 
example, weather forecasts for fishermen along the 
Coromandel Coast are downloaded from the Naval 
Oceanographic Office, which are then translated into 
Tamil for the intranet as text, as well as audio 
information that is broadcast on microphones every 
few hours to the fishermen along the coast. 
The villagers need to know all information 
on weather, prices, employment opportunities, 
agriculture information, good or bad dates on local 
astrological base, bus timings and routes, auction 
information from regulated markets, fertiliser prices 
and stocks availability and other important 
information within 12 AM everyday, as time is the 
essence of everything at the village level and people 
live on daily basis. 
The catalysts for such reliable information 
are officials from various Government Departments, 
who provide timely information on a token 
honorarium of Rs 750 per month by the MSSRF. 
A Notice Board is placed in each VKC 
office in which all vital information is written on 
Tamil at 4 PM everyday. The information is also 
announced on public address system at 10.30-11 AM 
every day for the benefit of the village people. 
The daily weather information is collected 
from the Meteorological Department and information 
on Sea Web Heights is downloaded from US Navy 
site everyday morning and based on the sea web 
heights and weather , prediction is made through the 
VKCs. 
The information needs are decided by the 
community themselves and accordingly the 
545 
information is accumulated from various sources and 
provided to the community. The women need 
information on immunisation, childcare, nutrition and 
gynae related information, which are being collected 
from doctors and Resource Organisations and 
forwarded to the women through the VKCs. Similarly 
the farmers on regulated market information, 
availability of specific fertilisers, pesticides, seeds etc, 
weather information etc. The fishermen wants web 
heights, weather conditions etc. The students want 
courses, examination results, practice tests, 
information on education, universities, entrances etc. 
Technology 
IT for the poorest of the poor envisaged any 
technology that will better serve the commonmen in 
the most efficient and useful manner. The Motorola 
communication technologies are being used in IT 
experiments in the UT of Pondicherry. The hub, 
stationed at the central kiosk is stationed at Villianur 
Village, and is connected through a full duplex 
wireless link, using Motorola technology. The center 
also functions as the Local Area Network (LAN) hub, 
providing data and voice transmission to the other 
kiosks of the area. Each kiosk is a node that functions 
on VHF radio (full duplex). This saves the expense of 
laying expensive communication infrastructure (i.e. 
copper wires and/or fiber optic cable). The MSSRF 
maintains a comprehensive database, which collects 
daily information on network usage, questions, and 
problems regarding the village kiosks. Information can 
be easily obtained through simple queries to the 
server's databanks. 
The Motorola's V Link Communication 
Technology based on the two way communication for 
data transmission and audio/video communication 
could be established with 30 kms range, through 
wireless technology. The speed of data transmission is 
14.5 kbps. 
The Motorola Technology is known as 
Spread Spectrum Technology, where the data 
transmission is on real time, with no scope for stale 
data and operates on a dynamic information base. 
Backup Energy 
Energy to the Villianur Centre and other 
eight(8) VKC are sustained though battery and solar 
(photovoltaic system) power provided by the Bharat 
Electronics Ltd, Bangalore, a Government of India 
Enterprise, costing about Rs 1,00,000, for the Solar 
Panels, Battery Pack and other pheripherals related to 
the power system, which gives a back up for 10 hours 
uninterrupted and has proved as a dedicated tool of 
power supply in the rural remote areas. There is no 
continuous maintenance of the batteries and mostly