Solar-powered ATMs by Vortex
Alternative energy can be a boon for third world countries. Normally governments have to invest vast sums of money in developing infrastructures for a long period of time in underdeveloped areas. If we consider the example of cell phones, they have bypassed the usual wires, poles, roads, telephone exchange infrastructures. People residing in remote villages can be connected via mobiles. Same thing can happen with ATMs (automated teller machines) too. Vortex Engineering is an India-based rural ATM manufacturer. State Bank of India (SBI) wants to deploy 545 ATMs across semi-urban and rural India.
V Vijay Babu, CEO and director, Vortex Engineering said they have to install a total of 545 ATMs, over 300 will be solar-powered. They christened it as solar-powered Gramateller Duo ATMs. India’s premier technical Institute IIT Madras will work in collaboration with Vortex Engineering for solar ATMs.
V Vijay Babu provides us with some stats about ATMs. According to him, traditional ATMs require about 1,000 watt of power. ATMs are also air conditioned. For air conditioning another 1,500 watt are consumed. In total an ATM needs about 1,800 units of power a month. But solar driven ATMs would consume less than 100 watt. Solar ATMs can do without air conditioning. Therefore solar powered ATMs will need 72 units per month. This will result in saving of 1,728 units per month. If we talk in monetary terms, solar ATMs will save 1.20 lakh ($2639) every year.
Another important quality of Vortex Gramateller is its built-in biometric capabilities. The literacy rate in rural India is quite low. Assuming most of the customers will be illiterate then the ATM has to function without PIN numbers. These machines will require the fingerprint of the customers as authentication. Vijay explains, “With a predominantly illiterate population in rural India, we decided to address the issue with a simple fingerprint identification for ATMs. Once registered with the bank, customers can use either biometric authentication or PIN number approval for cash withdrawal.”
But their challenges are far from over. The ATM has to be designed in such a way that it can accept soiled or ‘teller-grade’ notes. According to Prof. Bhaskar Ramamurthy of IIT-Madras, who has been the key co-ordinator in developing the new ATM technology for Vortex, “The lack of ATM-fit notes and preference of the rural population to get soiled notes impelled us in developing this technology which saw a lot of changes since its conception.”
Currently India has an ATM penetration of about 0.04 per 1,000 people. ATMs in rural India can really help villagers to take out money at appropriate time. Otherwise they have to cover a long distance to the nearby banks during office hours to withdraw money. V Vijay Babu claims that Gramateller will also be 20 per cent cheaper than other ATMs.
The company has already established four ATMs as a pilot in Cuddalore district of Tamil Nadu, India for SBI. Currently these machines are utilized by the local administration to pay the beneficiaries of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. Solar ATMs will take care of the erratic power supply frequently happening in India. Even metro cities experience regular power cuts. In villages, the supply of electricity is quite irregular. Solar powered ATMs will take care of power cuts too.
V Vijay Babu says, “Around 1,000 transactions happen through each ATM under this scheme.” Solar Powered ATMs will be fitted with inbuilt battery packs that can last up to 7-hours. If we want to talk about carbon footprints, these ATMs also reduce carbon-dioxide emissions by at least 18,500 kg per year.
Reference Link
http://www.alternative-energy-news.info/solar-powered-atms-by-vortex/
Courtesy
AE News Network
Indian school helping the brightest Muslims
In a congested part of Patna, capital of India’s Bihar state, stands a striking yellow building – a 100-year-old mansion that has clearly seen better days.
Inside it, in a small dark room, a young bearded cleric is reading out sermons from the Muslim holy scriptures to a group of boys seated cross-legged on the floor.
They are in their late teens, some are wearing skull caps and they all listen to him with rapt attention.
At first glance, this could be any of the region’s hundreds of Islamic seminaries or madrassas, where young Muslims receive religious instruction.
But this is no ordinary seminary.
After prayers, the boys head out to a classroom, pen and notebook in hand, where they listen with equal attention to a lecture on advanced mathematics.
This is the unusual setting for Rahmani 30 – a training institute which prepares talented but underprivileged young Muslims for entry into India’s best engineering colleges – the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT).
Only the top 2% make it through the stiff entrance exam.
Getting ahead
India’s large Muslim minority is consistently placed at the bottom of social and economic rankings.
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  I wanted to make something of my life, become someone  Irfan Alam, student
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Part of this has to do with education – most Muslims end up studying in madrassas, which means they have little chance of being employed in the private sector or government.
So the significance of Rahmani’s initiative is not lost on anyone.
It is the brainchild of a senior Bihar police officer, Abhyanand, who takes time off from his day job to teach the boys physics.
Rahmani was inspired by a similar school – the Super 30, where Abhyanand used to work and which is also aimed at poor children but not Muslims exclusively.
“In our country, any difficult examination is very fearful because a huge number of students take part but only a few get in,” Abhyanand says.
The advantage at Rahmani, he says, is the kind of students they get – mostly from poor backgrounds and determined to get ahead in life.
“They come from a rural background and that is their strength. They become competitive because, for them, it is a win or lose situation.
“If they don’t make it they don’t stand anywhere [socially and economically].”
Great chance
Irfan Alam, 15, the son of a barber who is preparing for the IIT exam due to be held in 2011, says it is a great opportunity.
“I wanted to make something of my life, become someone,” he says smiling shyly.
The school’s philosophy is inspired by the ideas of a madrassa
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“It’s the perfect platform. The teachers are amazing and the best part is that it’s completely free.”
It is a chance that few others where Irfan comes from will ever get.
His village is a good four hours drive north of Patna, with lush green wheat-fields, narrow dirt tracks and few proper buildings.
Most people here work as farm labour and a large number of the men are barbers by trade.
I meet Irfan’s father, Mohammad Shafiq, outside his modest, two-room hut made of mud and straw.
Now recuperating after an eye operation, he tells me how his son displayed flashes of brilliance as a child and soon outgrew his village school.
So he decided to send him away.
“Nobody studies here. Most of the teenagers waste their time or start drinking heavily.
“I can’t read and write myself and it was always my dream that my son should be educated and not become a barber like his father and grandfather.”
Back at Rahmani the classes are done but the studying continues late into the night.
Irfan sits with three of his friends inside his little dorm room, poring over textbooks and brainstorming.
In another room, one of the teachers uses a webcam to conduct a tutorial with students in another part of Bihar.
Cultural debate
It’s a fascinating mix of the traditional and the modern.
“The basic philosophy of a madrassa is that the boys live, eat and study together. There is no distinction between rich and poor – everybody is equal,” says Maulana Wali Rahmani, an influential cleric who heads this institute.
“There’s also a culture of open debate. It’s something I experienced myself while growing up in a madrassa. So we thought, why not channel these strengths in a whole new direction and see what we can achieve.”
To find out how spectacularly they have succeeded, you need to travel 1,000km (625 miles), to the national capital, Delhi.
It is a completely different world in the tree-lined, sprawling IIT campus.
Young men and women stroll into their classrooms, dressed in jeans and T-shirts, back-packs slung over their shoulders.
These are India’s brightest brains, many of whom will go on to work in the country’s top software companies or head to Silicon Valley.
Among them is a shy, earnest young man – Shadman Anwar, part of Rahmani’s inaugural batch of students last year, all 10 of whom made it through to the IITs.
“It’s been a dream come true, being here with all the other students. And I don’t feel as if I’m any different,” he says.
His is the kind of confidence that has helped raise expectations at Rahmani, whose administrators now want to establish 10 similar schools over the next couple of years.
India’s Muslim community is often said to have under-achieved, plagued by poverty, low education standards and a conservative outlook.
Now in one of India’s poorest states, a small initiative is trying to break the mould.
Reference Link
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8550548.stm
Courtesy
CNN
Paperless boarding takes off at United
- United becomes latest airline to offer mobile boarding passes for customers
- American Airlines expands mobile boarding pass program to 19 more airports
- Passengers receive barcode that is displayed on smartphones
- Barcode can be scanned at security and during boarding
(CNN) — More air travelers may soon be scanning their smartphones instead of paper slips at airport gates.
United has become the latest airline to offer mobile boarding passes for customers equipped with Web-enabled mobile phones or devices, such as iPhones or BlackBerrys.
United passengers traveling within the United States, Puerto Rico or the U.S. Virgin Islands can now log on to mobile.united.com to check in for their flights via their smartphones.
Those departing from eight U.S. airports, including Chicago’s O’Hare International and Dallas-Fort Worth International in Texas, can also receive an e-mail with an encrypted two-dimensional barcode that stores their flight, seat assignment and gate information.
Once at the airport, passengers can scan the barcode, which is displayed on the screen of the mobile device, at security and during boarding.
(The Transportation Security Administration still requires them to show photo identification so officers can match the name on the boarding pass to the ID.)
Mobile boarding passes can also be refreshed to display new information if there is a seat or gate change.
The TSA likes them because of their improved security.
“The paperless boarding pass will … prevent fraudulent paper boarding passes that could be created and printed from home,” the agency wrote on its blog.
Meanwhile, American Airlines has announced that it is expanding its mobile boarding pass program to 19 more airports, bringing the total up to 27. The additions include Washington Dulles International, New York La Guardia and San Francisco International.
The carrier began offering mobile boarding passes in 2008, calling them a way to make travel as easy and convenient as possible.
“This is a great alternative for our customers on the go,” said Andrew Watson, American’s vice president for customer technology, in a statement.
The program will be extended to even more U.S. airports in the coming months, American said.
Continental, Delta and Alaska Airlines also offer mobile boarding passes to their customers.
Reference Link
http://www.cnn.com/2010/TRAVEL/03/15/mobile.boarding.passes/index.html?hpt=Sbin
Courtesy
CNN
Brazil entrepreneurs thrive on the web
The internet is transforming people’s lives in many different ways around the world – but is it making us individually richer and, if so, how?
Brazil is a country with a foot in two camps – part rich, mainly poor, so it’s a good place to take the financial pulse of a global phenomenon like the internet.
Brazilians love the web. Not everyone has access, but those who do spend an average of 70 hours a month online, which is more than anywhere else in the world.
Less than a third of Brazilians have a connected computer at home, so most people go online at internet cafes, known locally as Lan Houses.
There are more than 100,000 Lan Houses dotted around the country.
Winning combination
The country’s online revolution has created opportunities to establish small businesses that simply didn’t exist before.
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 You have to be innovative to attract attention. We’re doing well because people are talking about us Fabio Seixas, entrepreneur
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Fabio Seixas is a 35-year-old “serial entrepreneur” whose three previous businesses went bust.
But he appears to have struck gold with an innovative way of selling designer T-shirts online, by getting his customers to do much of the work.
His website runs online competitions asking people to submit designs for T-shirts, which are then displayed on the site and people vote for the ones they like best.
He then manufactures the winning entries.
It means he only produces goods he is sure customers will like, and in internet-crazy Brazil his online design competitions have become very popular.
“With a local shop, you don’t have access to many people, but with the internet I can have customers all over this big country,” he says.
He created his company with $7,000 five years ago, and now his turnover is $1m a year.
He says that it is hard for entrepreneurs to raise money in Brazil.
“We don’t have access to venture capital and the banks are not lending money, but the internet allows us to start a business with low costs,” he says.
“You have to be innovative to attract attention. We’re doing well because people are talking about us.”
Massive growth
Fabio’s business is by no means an isolated case.
The popularity of the internet has created a platform for lots of internet businesses, many of them for online shopping.
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 A season of reports from 8-19 March 2010 exploring the extraordinary power of the internet, including: Digital giants – top thinkers in the business on the future of the web
Mapping the internet – a visual representation of the spread of the web over the last 20 years
Global Voices – the BBC links up with an online community of bloggers around the world
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“The growth of commerce in Brazil is not coming from the top 50 retailers, it comes from the other 10,000 retailers,” says Romero Rodrigues, founder of BuscaPe, Brazil’s first price comparison website.
He maintains that there is an ever-growing number of internet retailers, whose sales increase every year.
“Many of these companies began working from home, sometimes mom and pop businesses, and now they have 40 or 50 people working for them,” he says.
He dropped out of college to found BuscaPe 12 years ago at the age of just 21.
His site helps people find cheap deals on goods ranging from Television sets to perfume.
He started in Brazil, but now BuscaPe has expanded across Latin America and Mr Rodrigues recently sold a 90% stake in the company to a South African electronic media company for more than $300m.
But he denies that the deal made him a multi-millionaire, as the proceeds were shared with other investors who had put money into BuscaPe to finance its rapid expansion.
Social advantages
The internet is also helping people who don’t aspire to be entrepreneurs, in ways that open up income generating opportunities.
Local councils provide free internet access
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Paulo Ivan is unemployed and lives in a shelter in the country’s commercial capital Sao Paulo.
He uses the internet to find work by emailing his CV in response to online job advertisements.
He logs on at a city council-run internet cafe known as a Telecentro, where internet access is available free of charge.
“This is a huge city so it is easier to look on the web than go walking from one employment agency to another,” he explains.
“It saves a lot of time and I don’t always have enough money for the bus or the subway, sometimes not even enough to eat,” he adds.
The internet has given him hope and opened up new opportunities, even though it has not secured him a job recently.
“Unemployment is a serious problem here, people spend more time out of jobs than in them,” he explains.
Changing habits
The growth of the web has also transformed the way services are delivered in Brazil.
Millions of Brazilians do their banking online, buy tickets for the theatre and, most importantly perhaps, interact with government via the web.
Administrative tasks that used to take hours of queuing and hassle at government offices can now be done in minutes online.
The internet helps people get personally richer in myriad small ways that add up to something big, according to economist Diane Coyle, author of a book The Weightless Economy.
“The internet gives people access to much more information, which they can use to find a job or get better qualified,” she says.
“It also opens up new market opportunities” by making it easier, cheaper and quicker to buy and sell things.
The internet reduces what economists call “the transaction costs” of doing business.
It is in small ways like this, multiplied many times over, that the internet helps some people become a bit richer – and a few of them very wealthy indeed.
Reference Link
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8559334.stm
Courtesy
The Hindu
Bangladesh takes experts to the village, via internet
Mark Dummett has a webchat with Professor Tofail Ahmed who takes part in link-up consultations with a rural diabetes hospital
The government of Bangladesh has begun work on an ambitious new scheme to tackle poverty with the help of the internet. It plans to improve schools, hospitals, businesses and government services by linking them to the web by 2021.
At the moment, most villages – and even some communities in the capital Dhaka – do not even have access to electricity.
But the rapid spread of mobile phones to even the most remote and impoverished parts of the country in recent years, has shown what is possible.
“This will be a digitised nation depending on information technology, for information, for services, for all kinds of activities that individuals can do,” the finance minister, Abdul Muhith, told the BBC.
“This is a simple dream, and is really workable.
“It is the ideal solution for Bangladesh’s various problems. I’m sure that by 2021 the largest sector in Bangladesh is going to be information technology, not textiles and garments.”
Power cuts
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A season of reports from 8-19 March 2010 exploring the extraordinary power of the internet, including: Digital giants – top thinkers in the business on the future of the web
Mapping the internet – a visual representation of the spread of the web over the last 20 years
Global Voices – the BBC links up with an online community of bloggers around the world
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This marks a big change with the past. Previous governments were suspicious of the internet, and imposed high charges on service providers.
Bangladesh is one of the poorest countries in Asia, with a largely rural population, so relatively few people have ever gone online in their lives.
At the moment, the government’s plans are still vague and many Bangladeshis are sceptical of ministers’ boasts of the impending digital revolution, especially as power cuts are only getting worse. The country’s infrastructure is dreadful – gas and water supplies are also drying up – and the bureaucracy is famously corrupt.
But some organisations have already started connecting poor communities to the web, and begun to make a difference to people’s lives – which suggests that the government’s vision may indeed well work.
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 The sky is the limit for what can be achieved here Mahbub-el-Elahi Prince, owner of Aral Bazaar Community Information Centre
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Aral Bazaar, a three-hour drive from Dhaka, is a typical small Bangladeshi town. Surrounded by paddy fields and banana groves, it is a sleepy place where the men gather to drink tea and the women stay at home to look after the kids.
But in its small row of shops, and sharing room space with a photo studio decorated with pictures of Bollywood actresses, Aral Bazaar now has its very own “Community Information Centre”.
It is one of 500 set up by Grameenphone, Bangladesh’s largest mobile phone provider, which was founded with the help of Muhammed Yunus, the Nobel Peace laureate and micro-credit pioneer.
“The sky is the limit for what can be achieved here,” says Mahbub-el-Elahi Prince, owner of the centre, which is little more than two computers connected to the web.
E-farmers
A consultation on the web, is better than a two-day trip to meet an expert face-to-face
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“People can come and communicate with their relatives who live abroad, but most of my customers are farmers who want advice on their crops.”
Prince is able to connect them to a Dhaka-based website called E-Krishok (E-farmer).
Faruque Mia, for example, wanted to know what was wrong with his pumpkin plant. He brought two brown leaves and a diseased looking fruit into the centre, where Prince’s assistant took digital photos. He submitted these to E-Krishok, where an expert was able to examine them and then send back advice on treatment.
“We used to go to a government-employed agriculture officer for this kind of help, but he works a long way away and it sometimes took two days to get anything from him. The CIC is close to where we live – that’s why everyone prefers to come here,” he said.
A more dramatic success story is taking place in an anonymous-looking hospital for diabetics in Faridpur, half a day’s drive and a river ferry ride from Dhaka.
Many of its patients are too poor to make the journey to the capital to see a consultant, so this hospital simply connects them over the web, using video-conferencing technology.
Two doctors sit with the patient, taking notes and conducting tests if required, while the consultant asks questions. They can all see and hear each other on large TV screens.
“This has brightened the possibility of taking care of the rural population as we would take care of the affluent and urban population,” Professor Tofail Ahmed of the Bangladesh Institute of Research and Rehabilitation in Diabetes, Endocrine and Metabolic Disorders (BIRDEM), said. “It saves money, it saves time. It reduces all sorts of obstacles.”
According Zarina Begum, a patient with severely swollen limbs and face, she is now getting treatment that she would never have dreamed of receiving before.
“In my village we don’t have any good doctors. But fortunately I’ve been able to come here and see the Dhaka doctors anyway. My condition is now improving,” she said.
Bangladesh has been slow to benefit from the internet, but it is trying hard to make up for lost time.
Reference Link
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8563804.stm
Courtesy
The BBC
Street children in South Africa aim for World Cup victory
Just like any other national captain, Wanda Msani is dreaming of glory at the World Cup in South Africa.
But Wanda’s tournament kicks off on 15 March, three months earlier than the Fifa event and for the 14-year-old boy who lives on the streets, there is far more than just a game at stake.
“When people walk past us, they look at us like we are dogs. They look down on us like we are not even people, just because we eat from bins,” he says, his eyes burning with anger.
“They will see that we can be something.”
Wanda Msani has been living on the streets since the age of nine
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More than anything else, Wanda wants to make his father proud, hoping to be allowed to return home to the Umlazi township outside Durban, which he left five years ago, aged just nine.
Since then, he has been on the streets – sleeping on pavements, under trees, park benches and alleys with only a cardboard box to offer warmth.
“After my parents separated, my father started drinking all the time,” he says.
“When he got drunk, he would beat me up so badly he wouldn’t stop. I knew I had to run away.”
For Wanda and his team-mates, playing football offers an escape from their hellish lives of constant hunger, an absence of love, the threat of sexual abuse and in which sniffing glue is often the only comfort.
But while they hope that football can change people’s perceptions about street kids, it has also brought a new danger to contend with.
World Cup clean-up?
The street kids say Durban’s municipal police are forcibly removing children at night and dumping them miles away from town.
Some police reportedly use teargas to disorient the children and make them more submissive.
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 The tournament is the first step to my new life Nosipho Mabaso, 16
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City officials have always denied that this campaign is linked to its World Cup preparations or commented on the alleged abuses. They say the round-ups are driven by the need to curb crime in the city centre.
Workers at Umthombo, a charity which co-organised the Street Child World Cup, say they hope the tournament will remind law enforcement officers that the youngsters are not criminals but traumatised children who need greater care and empathy than many hard-handed officers show.
Fifa World Cup local chairman Danny Jordaan last year said he would not support any move to “create a false impression about South Africa” when he addressed a media conference where the subject of a clampdown on street children was discussed.
“We cannot be a country that creates false impressions. We are a country of diversity, rich and poor, employed and unemployed, and the world must know that we have massive challenges of poverty and housing and we must address these issues,” he said.
Burning determination
Thirteen children are in South Africa’s squad for the seven-a-side matches against seven international teams – Brazil, India, Nicaragua, Ukraine, Philippines, UK, Tanzania and Vietnam – at the Durban University of Technology.
South Africa’s team has been around for more than seven years but this will be the first time its members aged 14-16 compete in an international tournament.
South Africa has spent millions on new football stadiums
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For many of them the five-day football tournament is an opportunity to begin a new life.
They have been practising every day for two weeks ahead of the tournament, trading their worn-out clothes for smart blue and yellow football kit.
Vuyani Madolo from Umthombo has been coaching the team for many years and says it is a fulfilling and challenging task.
He spent three years of his life on the streets of East London and says he uses his own experiences to motivate his players.
“I ran away from home when I was seven after being repeatedly emotionally abused by my family because I still could not speak.
“I only learned to speak on the street. Today the children and I have a strong bond because they know what I went through and see that a better life is possible,” he says.
Although the round-ups have posed a new challenge to the already difficult lives of some of these youngsters, many are refusing to lose sight of their goals.
A new beginning
Nosipho Mabaso, 16, is the only girl on the team and says playing football has renewed her sense of self-worth.
“When I play football I forget about the bad things in my life.
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We are also going to take the cup – the trophy will stay here at home Andile Dladla, 16
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“Before I moved to the street no-one had ever tried to force me to sleep with them, but since coming here I know what that is like, it is very scary,” she says.
“I don’t want this life any more. I want to go back home and go back to school.
“The tournament is the first step to my new life,” she says, with a bright smile on her face.
Sixteen-year old Andile Dladla says he is looking forward to both his team’s World Cup and Fifa’s.
He says he draws inspiration from South Africa’s national team.
“I think that South Africa will take the trophy in June – I think they are getting better now, they are not losing every time.”
“We are also going to take the cup – the trophy will stay here at home,” he predicts confidently, raising cheers from his team-mates.
Reference Link
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8567522.stm
Courtesy
The BBC
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