The Indian experiments

In 1999, Indian scientist Sugata Mitra placed an internet-enabled computer behind a glass screen in a wall of his office building, which looked out to a piece of land occupied by street kids. The difference between the sleek piece of equipment, the sheer glass pane and the uneven road that sat before it was stark. And the computer and the many worlds of the internet it offered became an instant object of curiosity, a rabbit hole that led to wonderland for wide-eyed children.

It became known as the ‘hole in the wall’ experiment. The children, who were at first curious and then shy, very quickly began to use the equipment and with minimal outside guidance learned an impressive range of computer skills, from typing and website and program access to rudimentary coding.

As one child learned something new from experimentation, he or she passed it on to the next child with a speed and alacrity that impressed those who looked on.

The right technology at the right time transforms lives and it alters realities. One needs only to look out of the window or to the screen of the nearest device to see the impact of social technology and the internet on our social and political lives. In the parts of our worlds that are mediated through the feeds of our Facebook or Twitter pages, we see the causes, ideas and politics of those we know and those beyond. These are our own holes in the walls, and from here voice of the grass-roots and the networks that move them to action are ours to behold and access.

In India, there is a grand tradition of using technology in this way to the end of development. In the post-colonial era Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had the first ever computer to be located in Asia, a Hollerith Electronic HEC-2M brought from England, placed in Calcutta in 1956. The Indian pioneering of ‘tech-based development’ began there.

It continues to this day in the form of organisations like Drishtee which, as we saw in Chapter Six, uses technology to aid rural businesses and do it rather well.

Fads come and go. In the early 1990s, the tele-centre came to occupy the attention of practitioners.