News Tonight

India is cruising ahead in terms of technology. Cellphone towers, fresh looking buildings, shopping malls, complexes, etc. can nowadays be spotted any which where. The hoardings and sign out boards have now changed from “school” to engineering school, English-language school, biotechnology school, computer school, business school, and we guess the list is hard to end.

Seeing all these institutions, 600 million mobile phones and 1.2 billion people, half of which are under the age of 25, India’s hope are glittering like never before. No wonder there’s nothing better that leveraging technology and ignited minds by which India can aspire delivering an accurately better life for the people.

Though it’s a long way to go and the road ahead is steep, the auspicious dream can in fact be realized as sharp young brigade of Indian techies is no longer looking very keen on serving the back desks of Western companies. These young guns are now interested in inventing the front rooms of corporations exclusively holding the Indian logo. As per late CK Prahalad, it is the “Gandhian innovation”, and here’s just an example of it.

Vijay Pratap Singh Aditya, the CEO of Ekgaon is one of those myriad ambitious whiz kids India has produced in recent times. Though Ekgaon, Aditya is apparently keen on revolutionizing the way the world looks at Indian farming and better say the way Indian farmers look at themselves. He has built a software program that works on the cheapest mobile phones and provides illiterate farmers a text or voice advisory program that can notify them regarding the imperative suggestions, guidelines and warnings related to their occupation. The program can tell them the ideal time to sow their crops, pattern of mixing their pesticides and fertilizers, when to dispense them out and the quantity of water to be added each day.

“India has to increase farm productivity”, claimed Aditya, “but our farms are small, and advisers from the agriculture department can’t reach many of them”.