Assignment Code

MDC-005/2021-22

Course Code

MDC-005

Assignment Name

Development: Information and Communication Technologies

Year

2021-2022

Verification Status

Verified by Professor

Disclaimer: Q4 of this assignment is unsolved.

Maximum Marks: 100

Note: Answer all the questions; they carry equal marks. (Answer in 500 Words)

Q1. Describe the efforts taken by the public and private agencies to address the digital inequality in Indian content.

Ans) The efforts taken by the public and private agencies to address the digital inequality in Indian content:

Kisan Call Centre

On January 21, 2004, the Department of Agriculture & Cooperation (DAC), Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India, opened Kisan Call Centers across the country to provide extension services to farmers. The goal of these call centres is to answer to farmer concerns quickly and in the local language. Every state has a call centre that is required to manage traffic from all across the country. These call centres handle questions relating to agriculture and associated industries. A farmer can reach an agriculture graduate or specialist by just a single phone call, and they will be able to react to his questions and difficulties immediately.

If the Level-I respondent is unable to satisfy the farmer, the call can be transferred by conference to a Level-II expert sitting in a selected location in the State in an institution for guidance. If the farmer is not pleased, his problems will be noted, solved at the highest level at the Nodal centre at Level-III, and he will receive further advise via post or by extension workers' visits. The services would be provided 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In the following individual paras, the operation of Levels I, II, and III is discussed. During working hours, there will be a prompt response; however, outside of working hours and during holidays, the call will be recorded and the queries will be answered by mail. The Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India, has made a fantastic attempt to use the phone to bridge the gap between the actual information resource and the user.

Bhoomi Project

Karnataka's Bhoomi Project covers 6.7 million farmers and holds millions of land ownership information. Many people, as well as international funding bodies, have praised the effort. This project has shortened the time it takes to interact with the state revenue department's bureaucratic hierarchy. Bhoomi centres can be found throughout the state. At these kiosks, any land record can be accessed on a touch screen, and the project can also be utilised as a databank for numerous public and private sector projects. The initiative was recognised by the Commonwealth Association of Public Administration and Management in 2002 for "self-content governance and new frontiers." Bhoomi has received praise from the UNDP and the World Bank for his ambitious vision and implementation. Following the success of the Bhoomi project, other Indian states, including Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, and Madhya Pradesh, have begun developing Bhoomi-based models in their own states.

Gyandoot Project

Gyandoot is a Dhar district intranet that connects rural cybercafés that cater to the requirements of the general public. This GYANDOOT website is an extension of the Gyandoot intranet that provides global access. Gyandoot is India's first rural information network project, located in Madhya Pradesh's Dhar district, which has the greatest concentration of tribes and extensive forest. At large market locations or major roadways, every town has a computer centre, or "soochnalaya." People can quickly log in and lodge complaints or request information about the district's agriculture, forest fields, water resources, and so on. In the District, twenty–one village Panchayats have been connected to computers or information centres, and many private sector information centres known as "Soochnalays" have also been established.

The "Manwar Agriculture Mandi," for example, is a popular location where farmers may get the most up-to-date crop prices. These computers also have land records for a few tehsils in the district of Dhar. In addition, by linking to the World Wide Web, Internet connections have been made available to obtain global information. By spreading the Gyandoot Project to additional districts, the Madhya Pradesh government hopes to make it a huge success. With the support of the business sector, the state is preparing to open 7,800 IT kiosks. 7,500 "Jan Shikhsha" public instruction centres have been identified to train ordinary people in computer literacy, and policy is being developed to bring IT to the needs and benefits of the common people. The government is also attempting to enlist public libraries in this endeavour.

Q2. Explain the usage patterns of Social media outlets by non-government organisations.

Ans) In India, there is a significant digital divide between rural and urban areas, as well as across states. In terms of ICT adoption, rural India lags much behind urban India. Similarly, in terms of access and dissemination of ICTs, several less developed states such as Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa, Chhattisgarh, and Assam fall behind more developed states such as Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Karnataka. India is a multi-cultural, multi-linguistic, and multi-religious country with complicated socioeconomic circumstances. The adoption of ICT technology is linked to a number of economic and social factors. Some of the critical determinants of India's digital divide are as follows:

1. Availability of Dependable ICT Infrastructure: Many villages in rural and remote parts of India still lack electricity and other ICT infrastructure.

2. Digital Information Accessibility: Information access is hampered by poor mobile phone connectivity and limited internet access.

3. Education/Digital Capacity/Skills: Education, particularly digital literacy, or skill, remains inadequate among a huge number of individuals.

4. Poverty: In India, income disparities are extreme, resulting in limited purchasing power and a lack of access to smartphones, Internet connections, and other ICTs.

5. Local Content and Languages: For the Indian people, a lack of relevant information and content in their own language is a major problem. Because the majority of information is available in English, persons who do not speak English are likely to be denied of access to it.

Various people have been forced to use technology extensively as a result of the recent pandemic. In truth, technology is the only thing that connects us to the outside world, and most of us have been utilising it to compensate for the lack of physical interaction. Many organisations and businesses now allow employees to work from home. NGO's provide counselling and other online help to the recipients, while schools teach youngsters at home using technology.

With the use of more modern technologies, rehabilitation services for people with impairments can be improved. Many innovative technical solutions have emerged in response to the needs and demands of people with disabilities. The proper application of these technologies can improve the functional capacities of people with impairments, allowing them to contribute more effectively to society.

Q3. Give a detailed account of any online comparison that addressed one issue of development concerns. Give a suitable example.

Ans) A CMC user cannot hear intonation that suggests a joke or observe bewildered looks that reflect perplexity as compared to face-to-face communication, which is considered the communication gold standard against which all others are judged. Users also have difficulty managing informal conversations due to a lack of information input, a lack of social influence cues, and depersonalization due to a lack of non-verbal interaction. Simultaneous feedback has an important role in signalling listenership, effectively timing turn-taking, and maintaining continuous connection, according to research on spoken conversational interaction. Additionally, the lack of simultaneous feedback may cause discontinuity and/or overlap within turn sequences, making it more difficult for message producers to modify their messages to respond to recipients' interests and needs.

CMC users may have trouble tracking successive exchanges when meaningful responses are disrupted, and the conversation may become fragmented as a result. To expand on this point, Mackinnon claims that CMC's shortcomings outweigh its success when compared to the offline world's social structure. "Because [CMC] users lack physical reality, they must establish an explicit textual language to transmit meaning, emotion, physical attributes, and action." It largely relies on symbolism, analogy, and metaphor to replicate or transfer physical things and behaviours from the external world as a language-based society. [CMC] can never be a mirror image of the external world since these recreations are only metaphors for, or "analogues" of, their actual counterparts." The anonymity dilemma is another noticeable element of networked CMC environments. In the online environment, a person may have the opportunity to hide his or her true offline identity.

Participants in CMC have significantly greater influence over their self-presentation than in other types of communication. Each individual involved in the communication process confronts the other in face-to-face dialogue, and they obviously show their names. In a telephonic mobile discussion, the speaker's gender, age, and emotional reactions such as fear, anxiety, happiness, and tonal difference aid to measure various qualities of semiotic reference to a speaker's message framework. Nonetheless, the textual form of message sharing in the CMC retains only a rudimentary imprint of social identities. The internet message has the ability to confuse identification, which is inconvenient for those who argue that the content of communications discloses a lot about the speakers' personalities.

In internet forums, the employment of fictitious identities, frequently of different sex, is common. A good example is Rheingold's comparison of the offline and online worlds. "In the physical world, the identity and position of the people with whom you communicate are clearly known, fixed, and very visible. Everyone is in the dark in cyberspace. We can only communicate with each other through words; no looks, shrugs, or sardonic smiles are permitted. Even the subtleties of voice and accent are lost. We who populate cyberspace purposefully experiment with breaking traditional concepts of identity by living as several simultaneous personae in distinct virtual neighbourhoods, despite the technological limits."

The anonymity or lack of clarity, as well as the single authorship constraint, have severely harmed online-based research. A researcher can never be certain of the demographics of site users, and there is no means to achieve identity validation at the current level of technology advancements. Most computer interfaces are either not built to allow users to challenge the veracity of data or are structured such that anyone with a reasonable level of technical skill may change that data. There will be some concern about the trust quotient of computer networks until a new set of social norms for authenticating computer information emerges.

Q4. With the help of online data, explain any online learning project- particularly its functionality, mode pedagogical adaption and technological intervention.

Ans)

Q5. Enumerate any one Indian Start-ups that deals with social entrepreneurship.

Ans) Urvashi Sahni is unquestionably among India's best social entrepreneurs. Study Hall Education Foundation is her company, and she is the CEO and founder (SHEF). The principal mission of this organisation is to provide education to India's most vulnerable females.

Dr. Urvashi Sahni has spent the last 30 years as a social entrepreneur, educator, and education activist. She is the founder and CEO of various educational and women's organisations, including Studyhall Educational Foundation, SURAKSHA, and Sisters in Solidarity, which she founded in 1986.

She also pioneered the use of technology in education in Uttar Pradesh, working significantly in teacher training, curriculum creation, school reform, and gender equality. She is currently a member of the Education Sub Group of the Rajasthan Chief Minister's Advisory Committee. UNICEF is a partner, as is research with leading universities in the United States and Canada. She has published and presented widely across the world and is currently a non-resident fellow at the Brookings Institution's Center for Universal Education.

She graduated from UC Berkeley with a master's degree and a doctorate in education. Among the prizes she has earned are the Asoka Fellow (2010), the Overseas HAAS Fellowship (2000), which is given annually to one international student for significant contribution in their home country, and the Echidna Global Scholarship (2012).

Her initiative has impacted the lives of over 150,000 girls directly and over 270,000 girls indirectly through her work with over 900 schools. Urvashi Sahni received the prestigious "Social Entrepreneur of the Year" award in 2017 for her altruistic acts of dedication and passion. In India, she is a shining example of social business.

She has been invited to serve on the Steering Committee for the Implementation of the National Education Policy of India 2020 by the Uttar Pradesh government. Dr. Sahni was just selected to Tatler Magazine's Asia's Most Influential: The Impact List 2020 (a list of the most influential personalities shaping Asia's future). Dr. Sahni is also the founder of 'The UP Collective,' a group of NGOs in Uttar Pradesh working to unite their efforts to achieve the SDGs. On February 12, 2021, the PHD Chamber of Commerce awarded Dr Urvashi Sahni the 6th Astitva Samman 2021 for her outstanding work during Covid-19, with a specific focus on girl's education and gender equality.

SHEF (Study Hall Educational Foundation) is a non-profit organisation with decades of experience and a track record of changing the lives of millions of children, especially girls and young women. SHEF's interventions in rural and urban India are focused on community participation and norm transformation, as well as pushing government processes to be more equal and maintaining a network of model schools and outreach programmes. Our quality and originality stem from our egalitarian inclusivity and holistic, social justice-focused strategy to directly address India's patriarchal structure.