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Journalism of Courage
VADODARA, May 26: Okay, so we8217;ve all been hearing about the world at our fingertips, the information superhighway, the on-line blitz. But how much has it touched us, the common man or woman, in Gujarat?
Now there8217;s a very real chance that it can. The National Informatics Centre, headquartered at Gandhinagar, is in the process of formulating a new, user-friendly information package on a galaxy of subjects via the satellite INSAT-1D. Each of its 19 district centres and 190-odd dial-in sub-centres in the State are likely to be able to access this package.
According to sources, only a few of the senior State bureaucrats and politicians can access the package at present on their personal computers. The PC version will be made available to district collectors within a couple of months; NGOs and social fora can approach the NIC for a more limited package, sources said.
But what is more interesting is that the general public too may be able to access the package, a storehouse of data relevant to everyday life 8212; including medical help addresses 8212; which will be updated regularly. The modalities for general access are currently being finalised.
The programme, however, has rather downbeat antecedents: the poor response to the GISTNIC general information services terminal, NIC launched in December 1991. Poor response reportedly hastened its closure. 8220;Not even a single student interested in computer science approached us, despite the fact that the best software engineers are associated with NIC8221;, says a senior NIC official, pointing out that the organisation won kudos for its work during the 1991 and 1998 general elections.
According to Rajnish Mahajan, NIC8217;s State Information Officer, and its Principal Systems Analyst Shailesh Shah, the new service is a repackaging of the GISTNIC in combination with the PC version. The problem with the previous incarnation, they say, lay in the 8220;heavy rush of information8221;.
