Ideas
From MIT INDIA READING GROUP
Contents |
IDEAS
These is the place to document ideas you get about solving social problems. The ideas in here are not completely fleshed and this is to document them, see the progress on them and make it a resource for all interested. PLEASE document any interesting idea
Bring in technology to solve social problems
Submitted Ist October: From meeting on 30th September
Anna: Make a self-learning tool/software to be hosted over the internet to address problem of elementary education.
Ajay: Why the internet?
Anna: Pervasive, but could also make a software and then internet is not needed. If it is non-interactive, can be shown on TV too.
Varun: Bring new technology to solve social problems. New technology can bring change at a different scale. Internet is one such technology, it wasnt there before.
Lavanya: Dont think only about internet, but other technologies. As in Dr. Greene's talk, everything around is growing in exponentials. We also need to facilitate an exponentially growing change.
Varun: An example of another technology/science that can be the stuff coming out of brain research. There are new ways of training the *machine called brain* which could be more effective than traditional methods. Suppose we can teach someone to read 4 times faster than now; teach someone to read in 20hrs; it will make an exponential difference.
Anirban: Just came across the work of Brij Kothari of PlanetRead. Its another example of what Anna suggested above of utilizing pervasive technologies such as the television in more innovative ways. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/literacy-project.html
ROUGH CONCLUSION:: BASICALLY, bring technology to solve problems.
Gaurav: Bringing "cheap and pervasive" technology should be preferred to just bringing new technology as you can teach/educate people on blackberry or by podcast etc. but what percentage of social evil lies in this section of society ? My suggestion, use the same technology (Television/Radio) but come up with interesting ideas to solve social evils using these. Spreading education for issue like AIDS, Population control, literacy, voting rights etc. to masses have successfully been demonstrated by indian media.
Look for mechanism to solve teacher training.
Submitted Ist October: From meeting on 30th September
Rohit: What is the problem with elementary education?
Ajay and Pavithra: Answered the Q. Said one of the major problem is that the teachers are not trained well. The trainers dont know enough, teachers dont get guidance and they are unable to teach students, students get demoralized and dont get anything out of education.
X: Why not then think about solution to the problem of Teacher Training/
Rohit (later): We can setup a system of letters between educated housewives in cities and teachers in villages. A housewife can cater to few teachers. The teachers can send questions to the assigned person and get answers.
ROUGH CONCLUSION:: Look for mechanism to solve teacher training.
USE competitions as a means to facilitate change by a pull approach
Submitted Ist October: From meeting on 30th September
Anna: We can do a competition on the Lines of 50K in India or otherwise. A group by the name of PESO successfully implemented. They are ready to come and talk to us. By such a competition we can push the spirit of entrepreneurship in India.
Ajay: Why, there are already such competitions?
Anna: Which are they? Probably they are on much smaller scale, not enough mentoring, not India-wide. Need to find out more...
Lavanya: Somehow the spirit of enterpreneurship is not there in India. People just do some thing for the competition, they really dont want to go forward with the idea as an actual startup or business. It has to be understood why this happens and how to correct this.
Varun: Agrees. This idea is not limited to entrepreneurship. Competitions is a very good way of changing things by a pull approach. See, DARPA's Grand Challenge where an autonomous car had to be built which could go through a desert. It pushed research, system-integration throughout US universities. Such competitions can be done in India to push the building-approach towards engineering than just theoretical. Indians want to participate in many international competitions but cant go due to the travel expenses.
Manas: One can actually make a business plan out of this. One can have the company sponsoring the competition get the IP rights (or part of) from the competition.
Varun: IP rights dont pay back immediately, so this idea needs to be worked on more. Another way of making this self-sustaining or a business is to do something which Chinmaya Mission did for the India Quiz. They first sold books which had facts about India. One can thus sell a platform first for the competition, like for a robotic competition, a microcontroller platform, etc. This can make the exercise self-sustaining.
X: Why only tech or entrepreneurship, why not others like education, social development, etc.
Anna: This idea is doable and we just need
Anup: I know someone who wanted to do this. I can link him to people interested.
Himanshu: There are a few competitions in this area. IIT Bombay holds one every year. IIM Calcutta has a similar competition. ISB has something as well I think. Most of the elite schools have something on these lines. But these competitions are suited for highly educated people. So there is a niche in the lower segment. Not much money is required to sponsor such events, except the prize money. The prize money is usually given as seed funding so Angel Investors and VCs are kept as judges. It gives them exposure - VCs and Investors are always looking for companies/ideas to invest in plus they might actually get a good idea. Recently Aditya Birla Group started the Business Baazigar (on the lines of Trump's Apprentice) but fairly different as well. There the idea of promoting entrepeneurship at the grass root level is being targeted.
Anoop (added on Oct 17): I was in India in Jan 2005 to organize a conference between DST and CSIR. As an outcome of the discussion, DST sponsored B-Plan competition has been started. http://www.indousstf.org/indousdstintel/home.html The # of applications for this is astronomical. Finalists get to present at UC Berkeley.
NIF - Anil Gupta's initiative (Beehive Network) has a incentive based grassroots collection of ideas.
ROUGH CONCLUSION:: USE competitions as a means to facilitate change by a pull approach.
Need for Indian Alum Assoc.@MIT
Submitted Ist October: From meeting on 30th September
Varun: We need an Indian Alumni Association@MIT. It is a great resource which we are not exploiting as of now. We need to have a formal Alum organization and invite these people once an year for talks both given by current students and alums. This will facilitate interaction and open up opportunities. We can find like-minded people in the industry.
Ajay: There is an MIT Club of Boston, which is for the MIT alum. Why only India, why not South Asia or anyone, IIT alum.
Varun: We need a formal Indian Alum@MIT org and an event every where. Face-to-face interaction is completely different from a mailing list.
Anoop (added on Oct 17). I'm with the South Asian Alumni Association. (~ 1900+ when I counted last). I am strongly in favour of being inclusive. i.e solutions from Honduras will be applicable to India. Awesome resource to tap into. However, the effort to seek assistance should come from the students. I'd be happy to organize a pilot event.
ROUGH CONCLUSION: Need for Indian Alum Assoc.@MIT and an event every year inviting alum to MIT