C-DAC's Expertise accelerating IT usage for the masses :
Innovative Tools, Driving Progress

Despite the incredible technological advances in information and communication technologies during the past one decade, the benefits of these technological charges have yet to reach the rural masses and make a visible difference to their lives and living.

There is no doubt that new technologies have created a great impact on the lives of many of us, but the fact is that they have had only a minimal impact on the great social needs of our times: improving education, reducing poverty, enhancing health care, supporting community development and so on. Recognizing this need, a number of good but scattered initiatives have been taken in India in this direction.

To address this issue primarily, Department of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India & the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab, USA have jointly conceived the Media Lab Asia. The objective being to address the challenges of poverty, literacy, education, health, employment and micro - entrepreneurship through the use of information and communication technologies on a large scale.

Media Lab Asia is intended to be a distributed organization that will work with industry, non government organizations (NGOs), government and most importantly, ordinary people to bring the benefits of innovations in information and communication technologies to communities across all of India.

The vision of Media Lab Asia is to trigger the chain process of making use of information and communication technologies in the lives of common people in a sustainable way and to improve the quality of their lives. The objective being, to address the challenges of poverty, literacy, education, health, employment and micro-entrepreneurship through the use of information and communication technologies on a large scale.

The project is expected to play a key role in facilitating invention, refinement and dissemination of innovations that will benefit the masses, providing the right environment for rigorous research culture, and combining the creativity of entrepreneurship with the technical know-how of universities to grow sustainable, culturally appropriate solutions at various regions of India and Asia.

The Media Lab Asia research agenda would place special emphasis on projects that would touch all sectors of Indian society from villages to cities, government officials to local agriculturists, kids to seniors, athletes to the disabled.

Disaster Control

It aims at developing technologies that could be used for better disaster management such as predicting disasters, giving prior warnings to concerned people, helping out affected people, coordination of relief efforts and so on.

Learning and Education

It aims at developing technologies that could be used for imparting education to the rural masses and less privileged communities.

Health Care

It aims at developing technologies for providing better healthcare services at low cost to all, irrespective of whether they are located in big cities, small towns or villages.

e-Commerce

It aims at developing e-Commerce technologies that could support local entrepreneurs in offering their products and services more effectively with more efficient information flows and cheaper transactions.

Multi-lingual

It aims at developing technologies to support content and applications in local languages so that the benefits of information technology do not remain confined to the English educated only.

Global Access

It aims at developing communication technologies that will allow people living in villages and other remote locations to be well connected to the world.

Personal Fabrication

It aims at developing fabrication technologies for rapid prototyping of mechanical and electronic components that could be used by rural entrepreneurs in small-scale industries.

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