[Thu Oct 16, 2003 4:31 pm

Hi all,

I just encountered your group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MIT-OpenCourseWare-Discussion/

Even though I have been following the MIT OCW programme since the day it was announced including Sayler's plans as I have been trying to come up with a model to make education available to an underdeveloped region on the Indian border with Burma. Initially I was very happy to see that education was no longer going to be hidden behind costly tuition fees and physically distant cities. But having explored more, my area and most underdeveloped areas do not have Internet connections and can't afford computers and even books published overseas. I have thought of using a little Robin Hood justification to photocopy books but the problem of Internet access and computer affordability remains insurmountable. The current strategy is to also print out the material from the OCW web site and distribute it but from my cursory investigation, the material from the web site is not sufficient and a textbook is essential.

But the main catch remain that one needs a recognized degree to get a job. So these OCW courses are good for reference when you are already enrolled in a degree-awarding course or for a hobby but no one is going to employ you with just self-study from the MIT OCW.

The project i have been trying to start is one where courses for primary classes for all subjects can be made available in videos and played over cable TV. It can be used in our remote areas where there are no schools and no qualified teacher wants to go. They videos can be copied to VCDs and dubbed and then with a cheap black and white TV, VCD player and battery where electricity is not available, schools can be opened by the village elders. I am trying to film bright students volunteers teaching lower class subjects but the logistics of it is discouragingly large. So if anyone can point me to free if preferable otherwise cheap teaching videos that I can use strictly for a non-commercial project please let me know. This virtual video teacher classroom project is the poor countries' version of the "No Child left behind" programme. The teaching videos will cost a negligible fraction of programs like MIT OCW and that envisioned by Michael Sayler and reach out to a lot more people who otherwise cannot avail or afford any education at all. Programs like MIT OCW is redundant as it aims to provide better education to people who ALREADY CAN AVAIL and also AFFORD a reasonably good education. Moreover the OCW MIT course is useless to get a job while these primary class video courses will help TRANSFORM the remote societies through their basic education.

I appreciate if the members can forward this mail and project idea to people who can fund and produce these videos. It does not have to be of a professional quality in presentation and so even if teachers can volunteer and use a home video camera to produce these teaching videos that will be far better than what students in these underdeveloped regions get from the unqualified teachers leave alone the regions where there are no teachers at all! I always wanted to engineering, the school had not only no lab but no instruments at all! I had to improvise and got the students to remove their ties and tied them to the blackboard cleaner and geometry box to teach them about time periods of pendulums! So the quality is not essential but just the time to film and the generosity to make them available for free to the poor underdeveloped regions of the world. The exercise might even enable these teachers to refine their videos and produce a better version as a spin-off from it and can be sold commercially.

[Mon Oct 20, 2003 4:29 pm]

Interested members can subscribe to the group by emailing to [email protected]

This link gives the detail of what is being planned for creating the virtual teaching machines. It may look a little far-fetched for Manipur but by the time the technology is perfected, Manipur would be in a position to benefit form it. Try getting involved in the 'C' class pilot at http://www.geocities.com/machine_psychology/
The above link is very interesting reading to understand the science of teaching.

And subscribe to the discussions on [email protected]

It will be a matter of a few years before the computer and Internet becomes prevalent enough in the north east for us to leap frog our development. In an underdeveloped isolated region like ours, the internet is going to help bypass the geographical isolation and bring down educational cost to bring about a possibility to dramatically increase our intellectual pool and knowledge and hence development.

Computers currently look expensive but I was thinking that if every household invested in a computer and an internet connection, with the money that goes into private tuition, any one of us could conduct free online private tuition and more important avail a zillion more information than what the private tutors are offering in Manipur. Assuming there are 3 kids in a family spending 200 Rs. a month on private tuitions, it is a 21000 bill every month on private tuition! The catch of course is that buying a computer requires the entire amount upfront while a private tuition fee is a small regular payment. The computer vendors there should use their brains and demonstrate to parents and at schools. But who is going to spread this message there? But we need to be able to supply cheaper computers to Manipur. Revisiting our previous smuggling idea, we should be getting across costly computer parts along with the clothes from across the border. India is negotiating a free trade agreement with ASEAN now and if that takes off, I think the border at Tamu could open up altogether!

[Sun Oct 19, 2003 6:38 am]

Thanks Franklin and Shalni for responding to my previous post. First a little clarification about myself. The region is called the north east and it became a part of India after the British left. But because of the racial difference with the Indians, the history and the poverty that exist today with lack of infrastructure, there is an even stronger separatist sentiment than you see in Kashmir. However foreigners are restricted from entering the area by the Indian govt to shield the foreign media from the attempts to wipe out these separatist outfits and fear of more Christian missionaries entering the area. This has led to an isolation of the area further crippled by extortions to fund the separatist movements. I have taken upon myself the challenge to try and bring about development to that area not because it is my birthplace but because I feel troubled to see this ever widening disparity between the rich and the poor in the world. Jhai is doing something similar in Laos - http://www.jhai.org/

People in the wealthy developed nations take great pride in their philanthropic spirit but actually it is predominantly a condescending act to clear their conscience of helping ease the pain of someone less threatening to his/her source of income. That is why you see people passionately fighting for the rights of indigenous people and refugees but reveal their animosity towards foreign communities that have succeeded financially in the country. So we feel VERY PROUD of our generosity sponsoring a kid, donating food and clothes to people facing natural calamities but when a steel mill is closed down and shipped to a developing nation, racial protests ensue. But if we sincerely want to permanently end this disparity in the world we have to empower the poorer sections of society, which inevitably demands a much larger sacrifice.

I have looked at organizations like VITA and the Internet generally to acquire the know how for low tech knowledge in farming that can be used in these areas. But the most important entity is education and that is what brought me to this forum. The Indian govt does not allow mobile phones in the area because the separatist movements can use them ! Imagine that.... we are keeping our fingers crossed in case the Indian govt decides to ban vehicles too as the separatist use them on their raids! The internet just arrived in the form of dial up only connections but under these limitations and poverty, it is going to be years before the population can avail the opportunities and limitless knowledge of the internet to empower themselves bypassing our nonexistent traditional educational infrastructure. So without having experienced any of these ground realities, most solutions that come out from the developed nation philanthropists fall in the Marie Antoinette's "EAT CAKE" simplistic solution. Currently because the Internet use is not widespread even in schools I am exploring a knowledge dissemination centre where Internet procured information can be handed out to people using some other media.

So i have looked at the MIT-OpenCourseWare to see how this enormous wealth of premium quality knowledge can be adapted but it looks like we are still too handicapped to avail much use from it for the time being and have to frustratingly wait for better conditions to prevail in the coming years.

The solution of yours for universally standardized certification to bring credibility to the online course is the key. In India where university degrees are bought in some areas, an internationally accredited course might have more credibility like TOEFEL, GRE and GMAT but I am sure the govt will resist the loss of authority. Also establishing credibility in these international accreditations will be a challenge. For my Microsoft .net certification, I bought samples of 120 questions from the web and was surprised to see all EXACT questions in my 60 odd questions in the test!

So I feel the MIT OCW is better focused not to award degrees but purely on knowledge dissemination. A case in point is my current investigation on mushroom farming to take back home or my previous one on financial engineering to advance my career. It is a better objective to concentrate on making the amount of information available EXHAUSTIVE than to worry about assessing the level of one's knowledge. Of course there is the other aspect of how best to make the information easily assimilated and imbibed by the reader. Teaching per se does not necessarily have to be linked to assessing. Like in the IT community, there will be plenty of private assessing authorities that will spring up that will outdo each other to impress employers of their credibility and also work out the best strategy to raise money from the exercise. Now in IT jobs, there is less importance on a uni degree but on a specific Java or Microsoft certification, which by itself offers no teaching module. However to appear for the certification exam a person can resort to any form of study - books, online courses, classroom course, work experience, etc. And MIT OCW can be the market dominating knowledge acquiring source for this.

Franklin, I work in IT and I would be more than happy to volunteer for any work.

[Mon Oct 20, 2003 5:21 pm]

Being a person with strong academic credentials despite struggling against odds in the village, it was my father's dream to set up a library at his village. That theme of contributing books to a library seems to echo a lot amongst others too including overseas residents. But books and libraries are redundant now in the Internet age and costly too. WE need to be able to fund computers and Internet access in a library. Photocopying material still is expensive for large volumes so we need to investigate a cheap printing medium as I had raised a long time ago. What is the best technology to be able to get material downloaded from the Internet printable in a press so we can use the economies of scale to keep costs down and also speed up the printing of huge numbers of copies? WE need to brainstorm to solve this solution. Once that is done, we can print textbooks for almost all classes from Internet downloaded material and that will save lakhs of Rs every year from escaping the state in the form of textbooks. Also having such a printing facility solves our information dissemination medium hurdle we face today. http://promo.net/pg/ http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/news.html#pg10k Project Gutenberg announced yesterday that it had reached its long- standing goal of releasing 10,000 free titles to the Internet, and that it would soon also release a DVD of most of these titles. Founded in 1971 by Michael Hart, and built and maintained by hundreds of volunteers, Project Gutenberg is the longest-running project producing and distributing online books. It's also one of the Net's largest and best-known such projects. Its mission, according to its stated history and philosophy, is to "make information, books and other materials available to the general public in forms a vast majority of the computers, programs and people can easily read, use, quote, and search."

[Thu Oct 23, 2003 6:06 pm]

"Project Gutenberg announced ... 10,000 FREE titles to the Internet"

These are FREE material where no royalties are due to the author. The internet allows a single philanthropist to distribute information to almost every citizen of the world instantly! So if there is even a single person in our 6 billion-world populations that wants to say make a book on year 10 maths or information of silkworm farming available for free, the whole world can avail it instantly from the Internet. But in the current absence of computers in Manipur, we have to unfortunately distribute it to the rest of the majority poorer population on print media and hence the need to solve this "last mile" problem of a cheap printing presses technology.

For the free or very cheap textbooks project, it needs no computer in Manipur. Anyone even overseas can collect and prepare the textbook format and then mail it to Manipur. The "belling of the cat" problem is this printing of the electronic file into textbooks. If we can demonstrate the quality of the book and then get a guarantee from the schools that they will prescribe that book for the class and the subject, the quantity of books required maybe about 20000. Maybe the printing infrastructure is not even required initially in Manipur. For that volume, the printing can be outsourced to say Calcutta and the cost per copy of say a 50 page class 6 math book will be I am sure very cheap. Anyone who has better information on this value can calculate the costing. But if we can produce books for 6 subjects for each class and for 5 classes in one shot then the total number of copies will be 20000 * 6 * 5 = 6 lakhs books. If we can get 50 Rs for each book that is 30 lakhs Rs.

30 lakhs Rs with some loan can purchase a "top of the line" printing press. Instead of outsourcing, if we do the printing ourselves the cost of each book will be very minimal. The printing press loan can be paid off in about 5 years time. This will spawn a whole new industry of publishing cheap books in Manipur and could even capture the north east market. But I prefer to make this idea and know how available to the other north east states for free and keep it fully non profit to neutralize the extortion demands that would come otherwise. That would also exert maximum pressure on the govt to clean up their corrupt ways, as we will be the role models then.

I can come up with a year 10 math book easily in a month and if I go at it full steam, maybe a week! There is so much free material on the Internet already. Also we can just buy 4-5 textbooks in the market and come up with something our own too. Now if we can distribute this job to say 30 people the whole exercise can be easily done in a year's time.

Just imagine the relief to all the poor families who will be paying next to nothing for text books and I can GUARANTEE my book WILL be of better quality than what they use in Manipur now !

This project needs NO donations to the raised. Even a single person can come up with all the textbooks from material on the Internet. WE JUST NEED THE PEOPLE IN MANIPUR WHO CAN SPREAD THE WORD FOR THIS PROJECT AND GO TO THE SCHOOLS TO NEGOTIATE THE DEAL. So it is CRIMINAL of us if we do not implement this! If we do not outsource the printing, the drawbacks are -
1. We have to launch the project with books for many classes and subjects to make financial sense

2. More overhead of running the printing press

3. Negotiating the loan for the printing press.

So if we want to take baby steps on this then we should just come up with one book at a time and outsource the printing.

But then PC Jain or some bookstore company that stands to lose from this big time will bribe a minister to put obstacles in the way!

[Tue Oct 21, 2003 5:19 pm]

Is it possible for someone in Manipur to make the MIT-OCW programme be known to the Manipur University. Also can anyone contact the UCM or other organizations about coming up with a strategy to start making the demands for the rail line and removing the foreigner entry restriction.

In [email protected], wrote:
"... The Third World may be able to contribute to the lifestyle in the industrial-urbanized world..." This widely prevalent romantic sentiment is borne from the developed world imagining the developing world as a population of subsistence farmers without the need for the rat race for material and financial greed. For the small rural population relying on subsistence farming, their basic needs of housing and food is a non-issue. They grow their food and building houses with thatched roof and mud walls is affordable and labour is almost free as the relatives and neighbours usually chip in. Acquiring land in the rural farming population is also a non-issue. Aspiring to have a TV or a vehicle or education or healthcare are luxuries that can be abstained from. So the cost of living is almost ZERO for this population.

But there is a much larger population that resides in the cities and towns where subsistence farming is no longer a possibility like any city dweller in the developed countries needing a job to survive. But in the absence of jobs and a social security structure they worry about how they are going to get tomorrow's meal and send their kids to school making the cost of ESSENTIAL living much beyond their income (if they have any). And with the population explosion these PRIMAL needs issues are growing exponentially and that predominantly is driving the separatist sentiments and the extortions you see in almost all poverty stricken areas of the world. It is the issues of this section of the developing world population that we need to address and I am addressing the challenges of this level while projects like the MIT-OCW targets a level of society higher than that. Only jobs generation is the answer and that means setting up factories and industries and services and dams and infrastructure displacing people. This inevitably provides fodder for the environmentalist and development romantics to criticize that the developing communities are being dragged down the same DIRTY PERILOUS road that the industrialized and rich nations took. When I see the remote small rustic non-farming towns in the developed nations I wonder what is sustaining them? But then there is social security and tourism that developing regions do not have. So I have been concentrating more on trying to skim the internet for knowledge and technologies that can be used to drive the current agricultural and trading economy to generate jobs locally. Low tech, small capital requiring and mass consumed products like toothpaste, soaps, biscuits, antiseptic lotion, pottery, etc can be produced locally by non profit cooperatives instead of importing, in our case, from factories in the big Indian cities. The quality may be lower, but without the profit expectations and some "buy local products" marketing we can compete with their "economy of scale" pricing. None of these low-tech products are produced locally so the industrial revolution that happened in the developed nations hundreds of years ago is yet to reach these areas! Yet much of their population has moved away from the subsistence farming lifestyle and is dependent totally on their getting jobs in the cities. The remaining reduced subsistence farmers too are not benign to the environment like in the developed nations. With their slash and burn farming techniques that they currently use, the ever growing population has almost burnt down all the hill slopes constantly flooding the valley below.

The new highway that ran through your village or the one currently being constructed in the middle of the Amazon to link the food producing areas of brazil to the north east ports improves infrastructure, lowers cost of products making it more competitive, generating jobs and income for the whole population. A rail line linking the south of Australia to the northern ports for exports into Asia too recently finished but being a desert area, the project escaped the environmentalist's ire and only faced financial criticism mainly from interest groups that would lose to the cheaper rail transport. And that is why to truly and permanently empower and bridge the economic disparity between nations and people, inevitably jobs and the economy have to stolen by the poor areas from the rich areas! Without these crucial infrastructure developments, you will be reduced to an area like mine where the entire GROUP OF STATES and not just remote villages do not have a rail line even to this day to any of the state capitals. The British built the first rail line in India in 1852 and the first hill rail line in 1881! The foreigner entry restriction which the British imposed to prevent these small kingdoms from being exploited by the Indian traders is ironically now used by the Indian govt to keep foreigners from possibly influencing the separatist sentiments under the patronizing guise of preserving the indigenous cultures of the area!

We currently have a huge protest from displaced communities and environmentalists against the construction of the Tipaimukh dam in our state. Currently with our domestic ONLY consumption we have electricity load shedding sometimes multiple times in a single day during the PEAK hours to reduce load-shedding time! How can we kick-start an industrialization revolution however tiny baby steps we are willing to take with this erratic and inadequate power supply? The snowy river dam transformed and boosted the Australian economy and there are many such stories of mega dams all over the world. When such mega projects are constructed in more heavily populated regions like the 3 Gorges Dam, people displacements are bound to happen on a large scale. But though unscrupulous it may seem, the displacement of the few affected people, is to be weighed against the social unrest like separatist movements and extortions caused when we do not improve the industrialization and job creation catalyzing infrastructure developments. Now small multi micro projects are being proposed as an alternative and I am for that if that was an option but in the absence of that option, poor developing regions have to accept what rare opportunity comes their way of improving their economy and job generation.

http://www.e-pao.net/epSubPageExtractor.asp?src=news_section.Manipur_Diaspora.Tipaimukh_Dam

In developed countries like the US now such large dam projects are being considered for dismantling and many have reduced the water siphoned off but the developing countries need them to spur their economic development and environmental destruction is actually a sad but relatively small price to pay to prevent a more damaging social unrest. The 3 Gorges project has many displaced people whose compensation money was all stolen by the corrupt local authorities. Now insisting that all the infrastructure and housing of the new relocated area are completed and money should avoid such gross exploitation awarded before ANY work on the dam proceeds.

I have wanted to do a course on economics to understand the best way to generate the economy of such underdeveloped areas when faced with all these challenging limitations. But in such an underdeveloped economy, bringing across simple knowledge and technology from the developed world, small capital and a spirit of charity, can bring about dramatic RELATIVE improvements in the economy. Providing such affordable knowledge to the entire population by projects like the MIT-OCW is the key but in such underdeveloped areas the practical courses such as teaching trade skills and those to start off small businesses offered by VITA is more beneficial to the overall under resourced population. Courses imparting higher education that will land a job in a big firm benefit only a very tiny population as big firms do not exist in these regions and those jobs exist only for those that are able to go to the large cities and compete.

[Fri Oct 24, 2003 7:51 pm]

This is a link to indicate the cost of printing and it looks very encouraging if they can reproduce the same cost in India, which will not have the economies of scale nor the latest technology.

http://www.instantpublisher.com/pricing.htm

This is interesting related info for the curious.
http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com//offset-printing.htm

Outsourcing the printing may be a better option. The best strategy for the textbook project is to tackle it small in the beginning with very small numbers to win the confidence of the academicians, parents, students, schools and bureaucrats. Give it out for a slightly discounted than cost of production price. Once the trust is earned, then we can get the authorities and state academicians to approve the text and then go into large scale printing for more subjects. Since these books are meant to be given away, we do not have to apply for ISBN or go for a publisher. The print on demand concept is going to revolutionize printing. But setting up an efficient printing machine in Manipur I think can be a good business for anyone as the current ones are all outdated and there is a I am sure a big printing market.

[Tue Oct 28, 2003 5:21 am]

Finally someone to partner and split the work and expertise with ... We have the brave mouse stepping forward to bell the cat :)

The next step was to ask members if anyone can volunteer to send me the syllabus for the textbooks for ALL class X boards in Manipur but I hesitated, as there was, as usual, no response earlier. I can think of CBSE, Manipur and ICSE. Let us take maths as the pilot subject and we can try and be a little ambitious and choose Std. 10 and if that gets to be a handful, we will scale down to year 8. But I am sure I can handle Std.10 maths. The book has to factor in for the entire board syllabus. Overseas residents and those with Internet access can, if you are keen, send me the links to overseas year 10 syllabus or sample papers. Collecting second hand year 10 math books from various countries too will be very helpful. Then we need illustrators but that is not essential now. Also a reputed teacher of the subject in Manipur has to be contacted who will review and possible write a foreword to the book. But we can also get many volunteers for this from the international Internet community. Other members that want to take on other text books should start investigating as the more subjects we work on in parallel, the quicker the project and the cheaper the cost of printing from the volumes and the stronger we will be in convincing the quality of our product.

Next problem is going to be the cost of paper and the quality of it. I wonder how costly a paper making plant is and what consumption volumes are required for financial viability of the plant. If we can get the sums close to our favour then the govt could later start a paper plant, which will generate even more jobs and keep more money within the state. Nagaland I know had a paper mill many years ago. We have all the bamboo we need so it is a matter of the cost of machinery.

WE do not need the publishing role, as the textbooks are royalty free meant for free distribution online in the electronic format. Of course the printing and distribution cost is what others will have to bear. But we can take on "print on demand" publishing roles for commercial books predominantly meant for Manipur market, as applying for an ISBN is simple. If we charge minimal printing cost, the author too can lower the cost of the book making it more accessible to the poor Manipur readers but most important keep all the money within the state. Also there is no question of a book ever going out of print and will make the current illegal photocopying of books financially unviable. So now books can be published cheaply even for very small circulation volumes and the author is ensured of his/her fair share of profit. This incentive should make more of our intellectuals publish more information and share knowledge so we can groom the same intellectual success as in the sporting arena.

Why math is chosen as the pilot is because it is the easiest to automate the question creation and answer checking with the help of computer programs. The exercise needs the abstraction of the several question patterns and from a random generator and a formula, the questions and answers can be generated automatically and integrated into a Microsoft word document.

Assume the chapter was percentages and the question PATTERN of discounts by a trader. WE can have a database of various entities that make up the question.

Question Bank Database:

<Player>; <unit>; <item1>-<cost1>...

Grocery shop; Kg; apples-50Rs, pineapple-20Rs, oranges-10Rs, mangoes-70Rs Garment Shop; Metre; tericotton-10Rs; corduroy-30Rs, jeans-40Rs, wool-65Rs Book Shop; magazine; Sun-10Rs, India Today-25Rs, National Geographic-200Rs, PC Quest-50Rs

In the word document we can have such a template for generating questions in the percentages chapter.

A <Player> sold <item> at <cost> a <unit> at a profit of <original profit>. What price does he have to mark up the <item> to get a profit of <expected profit> after offering a discount of <discount>.

This question template above will be expanded when the program runs to:

A GROCERY SHOP sold PINEAPPLES at 20 RS a KG at a profit of 20%. What price does he have to mark up the PINEAPPLES to get a profit of 10% after offering a discount of 25%.

This is a very simple example to illustrate the idea to our many non-IT literate members.

So question creation is almost a matter of seconds and most important it ensures the accuracy of the data and print because of the automation thus reducing the time for proof reading. This allows our program to be even used by anyone from the web to generate free sample questions for those that need more practice questions. Ideally I would like such question generation program to be used by the Manipur board to generate multiple sets of questions so that adjacent sitting examinees will get a different question set to reduce the chances of an error. Moreover the automation and accuracy of the questions generation will allow the exam questions to be generated at a much closer date to the exam date and also require few teachers to be privy to the exam questions than is done now reducing the chance of the exam questions to be leaked out. But of course these are long-term goals. However the importance of my raising it here is because of the need to have an automated printing process that directly prints from a computer file.

If a letterpress printer does the printing it implies that the generated questions have to be set MANUALLY before printing thus defeating the purpose and gains of the previous automated processes. The most expensive and time-consuming process is going to be this manual type setting but most important is the introduction of errors. The last thing we want is to have a product go out riddled with errors ruining our reputation to be pounced on by our skeptics and opposing parties. So the printing facility must be like the laser printer attached to a computer. Once the textbook in the computer file has been sent to all the stakeholders and they have reviewed and proof read and corrections made, the printing process will not introduce any errors. This full automation from computer file to printing is VERY ESSENTIAL and we should be willing to pay a much higher printing cost to achieve this automated transfer to print. I suspect that the existing printing facility in Manipur does not provide this. But it is worth finding out the cost of printing in the existing Manipur manual letterpress printers so we can weigh the difference in cost. If you read the "Print on demand" links I sent earlier, there are machines now that also tries to automate the binding process to reduce this manual error. However most of the machines are way beyond our budget now but the internet revolution is going to shake up the printing and publishing industry and in a few years we should be able to afford such automated print on demand machines.

So we might have to buy the sturdiest laser computer printer for the time being and do the binding manually. Increasing manual tasks per se in our case is not an issue because of our cheap labour cost and time not being a factor. But what we want to avoid almost at ALL COST are the manual tasks that has the possibility of introducing errors during printing. Keep investigating on the various printers and their capacity to handle such loads. We could write to the various embassies in India if they have such second hand machines that we could buy off them for a discount.

The newspaper printing idea came to me as I saw a TV program printing out the times of India from special world newspapers dispensing machines in the US for $4.50. So I am investigating that though I am sure the printer for that paper size is going to be very expensive.

Below is the application for funding for the project from the digital partners programme - http://www.digitalpartners.org/sel.html

It might give members tips on how to structure such loan applications. But it underlies the importance of the need to get a web site up and an organization registered for better success at such loan and grant applications.

[Date not specified]

Problem:

• Non existence of educational infrastructure in the "most underdeveloped region" of an underdeveloped country with no IT infrastructure where not only computers but books even are unaffordable.

• Extortion by separatist movements holding back any big capital investment or revealing identity of patrons even for pure non-profit charity work.

• Fear of technology being used by the separatist organizations denying IT infrastructure by the Indian government.

• Archaic printing machinery exist in the entire state.

• "No Child Left Behind" baby steps for the poor countries.

• Permanent empowerment and development through education of the poorer population.

• Solving the "last mile" digital divide problem of disseminating the freely available knowledge of the internet.

• Running an honest merit based programme spurring the population to force an end to the corruption, in-competency and nepotism of the government.

• Text books charged the cost price (<2$).

• Later "Print on Demand Publishing" role releasing commercial books. Negotiate with newspapers flown in from the big indian cities to print and distribute for local market which implies printer needs to be of newspaper size. Currently it arrives half a day late at best, and sometimes days after because of the regular strikes and cancellation of flights.

• Income from these commercial jobs can spawn small cooperatives run industries to make soap and candles etc to generate local jobs.

• Academically excelling junior students invariably from poor uneducated families can be sponsored and mentored early to unshackle the debilitating effect to one's self confidence of growing up a poor minority in an underdeveloped region with no role models so they can achieve their full potential.

Partnerships:

Grass root level community associations preexist in such close knit rural societies and they will be used to disseminate and lobby the state educationists and schools to prescribe our textbooks.

Monitoring KPIs:

• First milestone is the target of maximum textbooks of different subjects of different years.

• Approval of quality and adoption as prescribed textbooks in all schools.

• Income from commercial projects as publishing house.

• Adoption of programme in other regions of the world.

Scalability:

First K12 subjects are tackled. Then university level subjects from the free MIT Open Courseware. Replication is just a matter of emailing the electronic file to any such printing setup anywhere. Once printer loan amount is repaid, the loan amount can be granted to another part of the world. Later film virtual teaching videos that can be used with a cheap VCD player, B&W TV and batteries in areas of no electricity and no teachers.

Funding:

Fast black and white sturdy computer printer that can handle newspaper size paper as a 5-year loan.