With a population of more than 1.3 billion people, India presents one of the biggest challenges to the endeavor to connect the next billion people to the Internet. Especially given the fact that 67% of all Indians reside in small, often rural, villages, community networking is proving to be a vital tool to assist in…
A salt pan worker of the agariya community in Gujarat works in the remote and arid Little Rann of kutch, Gujarat. Children of these workers accoumpany their parents for nearly eight months of the year during the salt farming season. Sheltered beneath a canvas sheet to escape the blistering desert sun, miles from any roads…
Indian salt pan workers of the Agariya community in Gujarat work in the remote and arid Little Rann of Kutch (LRK) region for nearly eight months of the year during the salt farming season. India is ranked third in gross amount of salt produced in the world, behind China and the United States, and the…
Four-year-old Vishnu Kabaliya recites the “Barakhadi” (the Gujarati alphabet set) in complete sync with the audio and colourful animation popping up on the tablet on his lap. Sitting cross-legged on a brown jute bag, he has a vice-like grip on the tablet, preventing his classmates from even touching it. “I like watching Motu Patlu (an…
Even before the Gujarat government initiates its well-publicized decision to provide tablets costing Rs 1,000 to four lakh youths, an Ahmedabad-based NGO has begun a major experiment to train poor primary school children of the saltpan workaers in the Little Rann of Kutch (LRK) to use tablets as a learning tool with the use of…
I live in the Little Rann of Kutch (LRK), along Gujarat’s western coast and spend eight months in India’s salt desert where my family, part of the Agariya tribe, extracts salt. From September to April, the entire region is a big salt desert, but May onwards it becomes really hot and then it begins to…
