Print

Comment

Email

Digg

Del.icio.us

Reddit

Participating in the 'mBillionth Grand Jury' held in Sri Lanka last week, left me both humbled as well as surprised. There is altogether another world of mobile phone applications, that many of us too worried about the corporate business, are not even aware of. There are real and meaningful innovations happening in the Saarc region that could transform the lives of common people.

Students and faculty members of a regional university in Bangladesh, for instance, have worked out an SMS based college admission system, once students have been selected after an admission test. Thousands of students and their parents are saved from the torture of getting their children admitted to a college, because it involved travel by trains and buses, carrying loads of documents and money. Similarly in Pakistan, there is a mobile service which is offered free of cost to citizens to alert them about various medical tests and vaccinations they are due for, including vaccinations for the new born babies and infants.

Then there is a mobile users group of dairy and poultry farmers in Sri Lanka, who keep in touch with each other to network and be updated on new schemes, fodder availability, FAQs, business opportunities and so on. Members of this group, to everybody's amazement, exchange notes more than five times a day, which is often more than you call up your home or office every day. Back home in Andhra Pradesh, there is a scheme for 1,50,000 school students, where the class teacher sends SMSs on every students' health data points to a central database for building a medical record of every student, and the state health department will take the required action on that.

However, most of these mobile applications were pretty basic and rudimentary, perhaps not emanating from a revenue motive. In many cases, the conceptualizers and developers of these ideas have not been able to sit down with the telecom operators or professional companies to see how it can be developed and taken to the masses. One reason that these application and content developers say is that, the application companies steal their ideas if they go to them, or they get a very raw deal if they go to the operators.

There were many such eye opening stories. Unfortunately we do not hear about these initiatives. One reason is that for many operators these services do not make much sense as they do not make any money. The operators are more keen on games, songs, and movie clips, as that's where the moolah is. I, however, believe that if these services can be packaged well, they can be a win win for everybody-the developer, the operator as well as for the consumer. Who would not want to pay for services that make life better. Perhaps, the government needs to play a role here. Such mobile applications will truly empower the common people.

ibrahima@cybermedia.co.in