[1st-mile-nm] And we complain about lack of broadband

[Steve Ross]

Just returned from India yesterday (I did not write the report Tom passed
on, though).

To be fair, the village almost certainly has several small generators, but
powering them up to charge the cell phone would be rather wasteful and
costly. India is in the process of providiing every agricultural village
with an internet connection, to check market prices and lock them in before
the farmer rents a truck to bring crops to market. Villages of this size can
expect a connection in a few years -- in their case, probably solar-powered
and served by wireless.

Across the border up there, one of my former Columbia University students
runs one of the two (weekly) newspapers in Bhutan. It is a happy, peaceful
place (unlike nearby Napal). He created his own fonts using Apple tools 20
years ago. The newsroom used to be solar powered (storage to car batteries).
Now he hosts his website in Singapore.

I have a current Bhutanese journalism student in Chennai. Her name is Lucky.
In class she wanted a detailed explanation of how subprime debt is
securitized. Will the peacefulness last?

Steve Ross

On Sun, Aug 31, 2008 at 4:00 PM, Tom Johnson <tom at jtjohnson.com> wrote:

> All:
>
> A friend in the U.S. foreign service writes from India:
>
> "...The highlight was staying in a village on the border with Bhutan --no
> electricity, the entire town of 300 people is vegetarian and won't let you
> in their homes if you've eaten meat. We visited the oldest house in the
> village where the owner, Anil Rai, a cardamom farmer with a high school
> education, gave us a tour. At the end, he asked me for my e-mail address. I
> asked him how he could use my e-mail address if he has no electricity. He
> explained that he travels 40 minutes by bus to Kalimpong where he logs on at
> an Internet Café. He also has a cell phone that he sends on a bus to the
> next village with electricity to be charged when needed."
>
> Count our blessings, yes?
>
> -tj
>
> --
> ==========================================
> J. T. Johnson
> Institute for Analytic Journalism -- Santa Fe, NM USA
> www.analyticjournalism.com
> 505.577.6482(c) 505.473.9646(h)
> http://www.jtjohnson.com tom at jtjohnson.com
>
> "You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
> To change something, build a new model that makes the
> existing model obsolete."
> -- Buckminster Fuller
> ==========================================
>
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-- 
Steve Ross
201-456-5933
781-284-8810
editorsteve at gmail.com
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