| What
is the need for doing this portal
in Hindi?
We launched the English portal in
January 2007. We always thought
that this knowledge and information
should be useful to many people.
In a country like ours it should
be there in its regional languages.
So we placed the Kanada portal first,
as we were based in Karnataka. And
following that successful launch
we were very happy to start our
Hindi in 18th November (2008).
So
the idea is what ever values that
the English portal provides can
be provided at Hindi too
Is
the Hindi Portal going to be the
exact translation of the English?
No. It’s both impractical
and not very useful. One of the
main things about developmental
sector is the amount of literature
that gets generated case studies,
research documents. So I don’t
think it is of any value to get
all that in Hindi. The Hindi portal
will mainly get its material from
the ground, from people who are
writing in newspapers, about their
work and so on. At the same time
there are important documents that
unfortunately are only in English.
Like water purification method,
laws etc. We would translate that
so that most people have access
to this information.
What
are the features of Indian Water
Portal in English?
There is lot of information there.
There are collections of documents.
Mateo logical spelt data, a very
successful and path breaking use
of information technology for development.
We gave hundred years worth of rainfall,
temperature and other Mateo logical
parameters at a district level on
the portal through Mateo logical
data tool, which has been useful
for lot of people. The other thing
is ‘Ask a question’
service, another victorious thing.
You can ask any thing about water
on the portal for free and get high
quality answer from good water expert
across the country.
Is
everything handled from Bangalore?
The main, Water portal was meant
to be collaborative. We have people
across the country to talk about
water issue. The managing group
of IWP, are the people who work
for Arghyam, whose office is in
Bangalore. Arghyam puts the operational
cost fro running the portal. But
we have a lot of consultants all
across
What
are the future plans for IWP, English
I’ll tell you something that
is very exciting for me, so far
after done for two years. We have
learnt a lot and got the value of
the portal. So we know what all
work can be done in some areas.
Having a portal of knowledge and
resources is a valuable question
to me now, can we take it more directly
involved with people. I want to
see how to involve large number
of people in data collection and
generation. Can for example we get
photographs of water based like
lakes and rivers all across the
country, through common people clicking
photographs or video tapping and
sending it. Then we need grassroots
level information about government,
for example there is Nirmal Gram
Puraskar, by the government of India.
This is the award given to villages
in India that has done well in sanitation.
Like everybody had a toilet. Most
of the time after the award the
villagers go back to their normal
routine. So we will get people to
visit the Nirmal Gram Puraskar villages
to find out what is going on, learn
from them. Basically a mass-participative
approach
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