AWAZ DE - Interactive Group Voice Messaging TECHNOLOGY!

Heard about this man from Amir Khan’s television show “Satyamev Jayate” episode 4 about corruption in India. Sanjay Sahni!  Sanjay Sahni was born in Ratnauli village in Bihar’s Muzaffarpur district. He studied up to class seven, which makes him the most educated among his parents and three siblings. Until last year, he worked as an electrician in Delhi, residing in Janakpuri with his wife and two children and earning Rs.12,000 a month on an average.  Sanjay was recently felicitated by Civil Society Online magazine, which gave him a Hall of Fame award. The magazine calls him a “wired hero”. Sanjay had never used computers, but he had heard of the Internet, and that it had something called  Google  that could answer any question. When he got to use a computer one day in Delhi, he logged on to the Internet and Google with the help of others, and typed in the first thing that came to mind: NREGA Bihar.

• He had been constantly hearing stories of the government’s flagship scheme meant to help poor villagers find jobs— MGNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) —and how hundreds of his fellow villagers back home never got their wages or job cards under the scheme.
• Clicking on a number of connected links, Sanjay reached a webpage that had a list of all the job card holders in his village and information that they all were paid. This wasn’t what his fellow villagers were experiencing. Sanjay took 3,000 pages of printouts of his village’s muster roll, and paid a huge sum for it. That was in August 2011. Since then, Sanjay has not been able to return to Janakpuri. His savings ofRs.35,000, too, have dried up.
• But Sanjay is now an agent of the Internet and information. Having gone through turbulent times and having faced the ire of local politicians and powerful village heads the past year, Sanjay is now an established source of information empowerment, helping people finds information that can empower them with knowledge of their rights and get them jobs and access to opportunities. Although this affords him no earnings, Sanjay is clear that the people in his village and their expectations have motivated him enough to pursue his new role seriously. To eke out a living, he takes up MGNREGA jobs.
• Sanjay’s efforts reach beyond his village now. He provides information to seven panchayats (village clusters) across two blocks—Kurhani and Sakra. His major expenses relate to Internet access, printouts of MGNREGA-related information and meetings. But the MGNREGA beneficiaries bear these costs.

Elsewhere, in Rajasthan,  Norti Bai , at the age of 67, is now a seasoned computer and Internet user, having been at it for over seven years. She first learnt to use computers at Barefoot College in Tilonia in Ajmer, where she used to run a cyber dhaba, a local version of a cyber cafe. Norti Bai hasn’t done much schooling and first set her hand on a computer and the Internet when she was 60, but since then she has been upgrading her involvement in public life proactively.  In her case, the Internet made her the sarpanch of Harmara panchayat in Rajasthan’s Ajmer district. Norti Bai is also a Right to Information (RTI) activist, and was instrumental is making her village significantly literate. Her office has a computer, a printer and data-card enabled Internet access.

Sanjay and Norti show how necessary it is to empower, using the Internet, the huge population that has been exploited for several decades due to lack of information.

Using Awaaz De's platform, Bihar NREGA watch initiated a Mobile Radio service for providing the latest information on NREGA activities and receiving feedback from workers. Check out how mobile radio is helping NREGA activist Sanjay Sahni.  Awaaz.De provides customized, enterprise-scale solutions for organizations /groups/individuals with specialized requirements. Clients can setup menu-driven voice portals (analog to a website), interactive question and answer services for customer support or information dissemination, or discussion forums for many-to-many information exchange, buying and selling, and more.  Awaaz.De technology can also be configured as a data gathering tool utilizing spoken voice surveys. Clients can efficiently collect personal information, numerical/transactional data, opinions, questions, experiences and ratings using these voice surveys. Use sophisticated features such as conditional branching and skipping, and collecting voice recordings. Clients needing such services should contact them directly at EMAIL:  info@awaaz.de ( WEBSITE: http://awaaz.de/)

• STEP 1: CREATE YOUR GROUP: Set up an account with a dedicated number to create your group and begin recording your voice messages within seconds.

• STEP 2: SEND YOUR MESSAGE: Group members can listen & record responses to your voice message broadcasts.

• STEP 3: LISTEN AND MANAGE: Use our web interface to schedule your broadcasts, listen to responses, manage groups, and upload custom greetings.

I always thought Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards. But not “Awaaz.De”. I call this TECHNOLOGY EVOLUTION ; one which can be used for the progress of the country, society and people; quite genuinely and affordably . I am excited with the possible exploration of this technology, are we?

We make so many groups over internet to talk about: food, travel, fashion, sex, cocktails, alcohol, drugs, diet, loosing weight, match-making, match-fixing and all sorts of things. Great! At least we are doing something. That’s not the point! I am asking; what are we doing for matters which are really concerning to our survival, such as: environment, corruption, terrorism, dirty politics, vandalism, stealing, rubbery & pollution? Let’s make groups to talk about them, shall we? And let’s find and use technologies such as “Awaaz.De” to reach to our objectives!!!!