Lapping it up: Fourteen-year-old Aarti giving her uncle a lowdown on the month's expenses

Tourteen-year-old Aarti Dhawan flips open her sleek, black Compaq laptop and conjures a PowerPoint slide for my benefit-all with a beatific smile. She then clicks on an Excel spreadsheet and explains the month's expenses to her 33-year-old uncle, Santosh Dhawan. A sugarcane field is an unlikely place to use a laptop, but if you are in Baramati, the sugarcane heartland of Maharashtra, you might not find many other places to use one. The shy, class nine student first saw a computer about two years ago at a computer lab in her school. Since then, Aarti has not only managed to master simple applications like Word, Excel and PowerPoint, but has also coaxed her uncle, a small farmer with 30 acres of land, to open an e-mail account and surf the internet. A year ago, they purchased a desktop that they use at home to access the net for agriculture-related information. "We surf the net to find out, for example, how to cultivate different varieties of grapes," says a smiling Aarti.

Information point: Common service centres (like this one) also provide information on prices of commodities

Catching them young: Children being taught how to use computers at a mobile computer lab

For now, the young girl is glad to tally the accounts of her uncle's farm on her brand new laptop-a gift from Intel's Chairman Craig Barrett, who visited the girl's home a month ago. "That's the cow from which we gave Mrs Barrett a glass of milk," says Dhawan, pointing at a sturdy beast tied up in the courtyard. Even as Aarti surfs the information superhighway with élan, she takes a potholed road during her holidays to a remote village 60 km away. The reason: her parents live there. Aarti has been staying with her uncle and family because the only decent school in the vicinity is in Baramati. That's the emerging paradox of Baramati and much of developing rural India-a girl who uses a Compaq laptop to access the net, nevertheless, has to stay away from her parents so that she can get a decent education. But that's a different story.

Plug and Play

Baramati, sugarcane heartland and Sharad Pawar stronghold, has about 100 villages that largely earn their livelihood from agriculture and cattle farming. As you enter Baramati, the first thing that you feel is the smooth road, in sharp contrast to the bumpy, spine-jarring road that connects Pune to the small, dusty taluka. A tough find on the map of India, it's this obscure taluka, nearly 120 km from Pune, that tech giant Intel chose to implement a pioneering WiMax project. This technology allows internet connectivity over long distances, theoretically, as much as 30 km. Simply put, WiMax is 'Wi-Fi on steroids' (See The WiMax FAQ). So, why did Intel choose Baramati? For one, the support from the local authorities led by Sharad Pawar was forthcoming. Two, a local college, Vidya Pratishthan's Institute of Information Technology (VIIT) has been doing pioneering information, communication and technology (ICT) work. Pawar, incidentally, is a member of the governing council of VIIT. Also, given the topography of Baramati-with villages spread far and wide-the success of WiMax would be a standup case for WiMax as a medium for last mile connectivity in rural areas. Intel is using WiMax to connect a series of five community internet kiosks spread across five villages in the taluka to the VIIT campus, which will serve as a base camp for the WiMax implementation. (In other words, Baramati still doesn't have 'mobile' WiMax-that is, Aarti still can't surf the internet from her uncle's farm, but must go to an internet kiosk.) Of the five villages, Katewadi is the closest at a distance of 10 km from the VIIT campus, while the rest of the villages are at least 20-25 km away from the campus. Physically wiring up these community kiosks for internet connectivity would not only have been costly, but also a logistics nightmare.

THE OTHER REVOLUTION Dairy farmers benefit from a different sort of technology.

Cool concept: Dynamix's cooler ensures that farmers do not have to worry about their milk going bad A decade ago, Prakash Kumar Jagtap, had two cows. Every day, he would rise at the crack of dawn, milk the cows and rush around the small town of Baramati to sell the milk as soon as possible. But there was a problem: "Every week nearly Rs 350 worth of milk was going to waste," recollects Jagtap. That story has considerably changed since. Across the road from his dairy is a giant cooler that can store 2,000 litres of milk. It belongs to Dynamix, the largest dairy company in Maharashtra, which supplies milk products like yoghurt, and mozzarella cheese to multinational giants like Nestle and Pizza Hut from this plant at Baramati. Nearly 60 per cent of the plant's products are exported to the US and Europe. In all, Dynamix collects nearly a million litres of milk from five districts, including Baramati. "We plan to have 250 more coolers by June 2007, in addition to the 250 we already have," says Vinit Shah, plant manager at Dynamix. The secret to Jagtap's and Dynamix' success lies in the fact that it changed the way milk was collected in Baramati. As soon as a farmer like Jagtap arrives at any of the 250 collection centres with his milk can, a sample is taken for test. The sample's fat content shows up on a screen that, in turn, determines the price of the milk. A printed receipt is instantly handed out to Jagtap that shows the milk's fat content, weight and price. Within a period of 10 days, Jagtap gets his dues. Today, Jagtap has increased his cattle count from two to 12 and zips around on a Hero Honda.

The kiosks, called common services centres, provide internet access in addition to other services like giving out prices of commodities such as wheat, bajra, and sugarcane for farmers. Villagers can also get basic documentation like land records, birth and death certificates at the centres. "We are looking at ICT initiatives that will benefit the common man. We plan to take services to a village level. Otherwise, a villager would have to travel to Baramati town to avail these services," says Amol Goje, Director, VIIT, and the man spearheading several ICT ventures happening at Baramati. With an eye on making these kiosks economically sustainable, most services are available at a small fee. For example, a land ownership certificate or a caste certificate would be available for Rs 5. In addition, farm tools from Mico Bosh, like drills, are available for a rent of Rs 30 per day. Villagers can also make a call or get a document photocopied at the centre instead of travelling all the way to Baramati town.

It's not Australia: Courtesy the internet, Tawde took to rearing EMU and sells their meat in India

The Last Mile Challenge

Clearly, it's a mini-it revolution afoot at Baramati. There are about 136.2 million mobile phone connections and 40.6 million landline subscribers in India. But the telecommunications reach is largely confined to the big cities and towns. More than 6 lakh villages in India have no basic telecom service. The biggest problem in wiring up villages is viability. The cost of rolling out fibre optic cables across these villages is too prohibitive for any operator or groups of operators. Even wireless technologies such as GSM and CDMA don't have the ability at present to deliver hi-speed data over a large area, and even when 3g comes, enabling hi-speed delivery of data and video, the problem of reach will remain. Cable is another last mile solution, but Indian cable operators have not invested in reaching villages.

Pioneering work: Goje's institute serves as the base camp for WiMax implementation

That's why companies like Intel see WiMax as an answer to India's last mile problem. For more than two years now, Intel has been working with cellular operators (Aircel in the case of Baramati) to offer WiMax on a trial basis. Compared to Wi-Fi, which has a range of 1,200 metres at most, WiMax can, theoretically, be delivered over a radius of 30 km, enabling both point to multipoint and mobile wireless broadband. Intel, globally, makes the WiMax 'system-on-chip' that allows mobile phones and laptops to connect with WiMax modems.

Of Emus and ECGs

Even as I visited these community kiosks in far-flung dusty villages, the sceptic in me kept asking questions-what can a farmer do with the internet, day after day? How long will a farmer surf the net for the latest exploits of the sugarcane borer or the woolly aphid pest? But then, I had forgotten the basic premise of the internet-that the world of ideas is just a click away. ITC's eChoupal had proved that only too well. And I had not met Sandeep Tawde.

GOOD MORNING, BARAMATI The FM channel is on air for seven hours every day and reaches out to 30,000 farmers.

Rise and shine: Baramati's community radio channel is all about agriculture, with some music thrown in It is 6 a.m. at Baramati. As farmers get ready to harvest their sugarcane and grape crop, 21-year-old Mandar Kinkar puts on a pair of headphones and starts his day with a crisp Marathi greeting. Kinkar is a final year student of commerce at a local college and an announcer for Baramati's community radio channel. The channel, called Vasundhara Vahini, is on air nearly seven hours every day-with two slots of three-and-a-half hours each at dusk and dawn. Of this, Vasundhara Vahini broadcasts nearly five hours of agriculture-related programming, including tips for farmers, interviews of agricultural experts and local farmers who have adopted innovative practices. In all, the FM channel reaches out to nearly 30,000 farmers in the region with broadcasts of nearly 150 hours of programming every month. On Mondays and Thursdays, a programme called Baazar Bhaav is aired that gives out the rates of commodities like wheat, bajra, vegetables. Recently, Baramati also hosted an international grape production symposium. As experts from Australia and Israel made presentations at the conference, the event was broadcast live with a Marathi translation. "Even as the PowerPoint presentations were being made by foreign experts, farmers could hear the presentations while working in the fields with FM sets that were distributed especially for the occasion," says VIIT's Amol Goje.

THE WIMAX FAQ

What is WiMax? It stands for worldwide interoperability of microwave access (WiMax) and, as the name suggests, it's a standards initiative. But what it really means is wireless broadband over a wide area. How is it different from Wi-fi? Wi-fi is limited to a local area of, say, a few hundred metres in radius. WiMax, in comparison, can deliver wireless broadband over a 30-km radius. Using mesh networks Wi-fi can be delivered across a city, but the quality tends to suffer. Will WiMax be available on cell phones? WiMax has competing technologies, but it's evident that some time soon, high-speed wireless broadband will be available on mobile phones.

The 37-year-old poultry farmer got into the business in 1982 with 50 chicken. Since 1993, he had always wanted to breed birds other than chicken to augment his income. But sources of information in a small town like Baramati were limited. And then, in 2002, a cyber café opened at Baramati and Tawde struck pay dirt. He discovered, on the net, that the EMU (an Australian bird) could be bred in India. And what's more, EMU meat was far costlier than that of the chicken he was breeding. An avid Googler who surfs the net two to four hours every day, Tawde sold nearly 750 kilos of EMU meat last year in India alone at Rs 180 per kilo. This year, he plans to sell two tonnes of EMU meat. As he sits in his bare one-room office, people walk in to ask for advice. "I help people surf the net whenever they come to me for information. I do that for free," he says.

A healthy trend: Dr Goje (R) e-mails ECG readings to a Bangalore hospital and gets the results in five minutes

A mini-IT revolution: WiMax has opened up a world of opportunities for the five villages of Baramati

But stories like that of Tawde are still one-off instances. The real benefits of technology can be witnessed at the Rural Hospital at Rui, a stone's throw from the Wi-Fi enabled VIIT campus. Bapu Atole, 50, is due for a medical check-up for a suspected heart problem. Normally, a specialised heart check-up like this would mean a two-and-a-half hour bumpy bus trip to Pune. The farmer, incidentally, has never left Baramati in his 50 years on the planet. But Intel's recently launched telemedicine service saves Atole the hassle of leaving his beloved Baramati. As I watch, Atole's ECG readings are taken and e-mailed to Narayana Hrudayalaya, a super specialty hospital in Bangalore. In less than five minutes, an e-mail from Dr Bomaiah pops up from Bangalore. "Sinus rhythm within normal limit," reads the e-mail. Case closed. Says Dr Manjusha Goje (Goje's wife), who runs the clinic: "We are reaching out with these services to the unreachable."

As I wrapped up my two-day tour of Baramati, I was left with one stark realisation: Man's oldest occupation, agriculture, and his latest obsession, technology, had come together seamlessly in this otherwise nondescript place. God bless the techies.