The next million jobs in India

Software & Software‑enabled Services (SSeS) was the first non-traditional economic activity which gave a boost to India’s exports.

https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2219981&reg=48&lang=2

Since 2022, the gig economy has been a major contributor to the economy, quality of life, and employment in India. However, this cannot continue without government initiative. The first few years of success have been due to the absence of regulatory control. It was largely driven by the telecom revolution: the spread of affordable cell phones and access to the Internet. Employment in India’s gig sector is expected to grow from 7.7 million workers in 2020–21 to 23.5 million workers by 2029–30, according to NITI Aayog (Government of India). Careful government initiatives will be necessary to support such growth.

Mere control will be counterproductive. Initiatives to create greater opportunities for growth of this sector are essential. Focusing only on the job-creation aspect will be short-sighted. The jobs created need to contribute to the consumer’s benefit and increase overall productivity.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx20qlglgw5o

One obvious area that can support a million new productive jobs is to allow all payment banks to deliver services at the consumer’s doorstep. Currently, the only bank allowed to do this is the Government of India–owned payments bank, operated by the Department of Posts (IPPB). It is a brilliant idea to enable customers to transfer money to IPPB from any bank using the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and for the post-persons deliver cash at the door.  Why should not other Payment Banks be allowed to do this? This alone may create a million productive jobs.

Another obvious area is for hospitals in the public sector to provide health services at the patient’s doorstep. I know a couple of families that found it impossible to get proper care in public hospitals.  They could not give up their jobs to wait long hours in queues and to run from one building to another. In one of these families, the main breadwinner is a cancer patient who is now without proper treatment. His wife has to slog in her job to keep body and soul together.  

Portals for public service are often user-unfriendly. It is important to audit them for user-friendliness. It is not only to serve Indian citizens. Poor quality Indian portals bring a bad name to our software and service capabilities and threaten a major export business of India.

Srinivasan Ramani

7-09-2026

Should the Act of Giving a Bribe be Treated as Legal?

Adam Jacobson had mentioned an interesting article available on the Web to Tanjam Jacobson who kindly sent me an email about it. It is a six-year old article. A search indicates that it has been widely read and discussed in many countries starting in 2011. However, I am sure that the paper would remain relevant to India till at least the year 5,000 A. D! The article is:

Why, for a Class of Bribes, the Act of Giving a Bribe should be Treated as Legal, 
Kaushik Basu, March 2011, Chief Economic Adviser, Ministry of Finance,
Government of India, New Delhi – 1
http://www.kaushikbasu.org/Act_Giving_Bribe_Legal.pdf

It is interesting to go to Basu’s website http://www.kaushikbasu.org and read more about him and his other interests.

Now back to Basu’ proposal on the act of giving a bribe – he suggests that if the bribe is given under fear of harassment by a public servant, the giver should not be subject to criminal liability. Decriminalizing the act of giving a bribe would encourage the giver to complain about, or testify to, the bribe-taker’s crime of demanding and receiving it. Further, says Basu, we should return to the bribe-giver the bribe amount recovered from the bribe-taker.

Basu quotes from Kautilya’s Arthashastra: “Just as it is impossible to know when a fish moving in water is drinking it, so it is impossible to find out when government servants in charge of undertakings misappropriate money”. I would suggest that it is equally difficult to separate ill-gotten wealth of a “neta” from the black money raised for his/her party!  

Basu recognizes that his proposal, if implemented, could make public servants vulnerable to blackmail and false charges of bribe-taking. His suggestion for preventing this is to increase the punishment for blackmail and false accusation.

Let me now share my thoughts about Basu’s proposal. In the first place, the proposal ought to be implemented; there is no doubt about that. However, that may not be enough. A lot more would need to be done. Let me mention a couple of issues that would need to be considered.

One problem is that legal solutions to Indian problems get buried under pending cases. Read the article titled Twenty-three years after accepting a bribe

Wealthy criminals hire lawyers who exploit every weakness in the legal system to get the final decision delayed by a few decades. During this time, the problem gets solved for the accused as witnesses die, or undergo a miraculous change of mind. In some cases, the accused themselves die of old age before all possibility of appeals and adjournments is exhausted. I wonder if the Indian judicial system would have been better if no possibility of appeal had existed for the cop in the news item mentioned above. He would have gone on to serve one year in jail and could have lived the rest of his life, hopefully, in some sensible manner.

There is another problem – proportionality of punishment. Times of India had reported a case in which a constable was dismissed from service for receiving Rs 100 from a passenger at the Indira Gandhi Airport in New Delhi:

HC relief for constable sacked over graft charges (The Times of India, New Delhi Edition, 31 Jan 2010, Abhinav Garg, Abhinav.Garg@times-group.com). Visit http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/HC-relief-for-constable-sacked-over-graft-charges/articleshow/5518515.cms

The constable’s appeal was heard fifteen years after the conviction. In comparison, consider a public servant elected or otherwise, against whom a five Crore bribery charge is proved. The bribe taker would have surely caused a loss to the public exchequer worth many times the bribe amount. What is loss involved? Can we measure it in terms of lives that could have been saved with it? Prof Robert Black at Johns Hopkins has calculated the cost of saving a life. You can read the news report on his work and calculate for yourself how many lives we can save in India with Rs 5 Crores. My estimate is that we can save at least 5,000 lives. What is the punishment for gobbling up that much, or more, of public wealth! The Prevention of Corruption Act provides that the offence be punishable with “imprisonment for a term which shall be not less than six months but which may extend to five years and shall also be liable to fine”. Note that the law does not specify rigorous imprisonment.

I would vote for the punishment to be enhanced to a life imprisonment at least, without any possibility of remission or parole, if the bribes taken add up to Rs five Crores or more.

Justice is always implemented with human decisions. It cannot be 100% satisfactory in all cases. We make practical compromises in framing the law, to minimize unfairness. However, the question is who the compromises benefit? Who are left in the lurch? I feel that legislation that simplifies the system and speeds up justice would do more good than harm.

16-12-2016 Update on Demonetization

Please revisit my blog post How to use any bonanza the Govt gets in which I had reported suggestions from Swaminathan Aiyar (SA) for utilizing the 3 Trillion Rupees he expected will be the Govt’s bonanza coming out of demonetization of high value currency notes. Now, the chances of getting 3 Trillion bonanza needs downsizing! I guess he must be re-working his calculations!

The thriller has 14 days more to run, and the climax scene is eagerly awaited. How many of the anti-social elements holding black money will burn their “invalid” notes? How many of them will make asses of the honest tax payers? Crooks are usually no idiots! Besides, many top politicians are willing to serve as their advisers and lawyers! 

RBI says Rs 12.44 Crores of banned currency has been deposited with banks. The Govt. thinks that the figure may be wrong because the banks may have mixed up deposits of valid currency as well while adding up the total. Visit

Banks get Rs 12.44 lakh crore in old notes till Dec 10

Rs. 12.44 lakh crore in invalid notes may not have come back

The following is the picture if the RBI figures are to be believed; the unit used for money is Rs. Trillions. (I don't talk to my wife anymore about 500 Rs. and 2000 Rs. It is always about Trillions!)  

Strange are the ways of those who declare large incomes!

Photo by Sumita Roy Dutta (Own work) 

[CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

One family declares an income of Two Trillion Rupees! 

http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/rs-2-lakh-crore-income-declaration-by-mumbai-family-being-investigated-government-1633843

Fantastic! If there were twenty other families like that, other Indians can quit their jobs and do whatever they like – writing philosophy, climbing Everest, practicing Holistic health, etc. The tax from the twenty-one families can be distributed to the rest of us, and we will take human life to a new plane!

What looks like small potatoes in comparison to the income of the Mumbai family, is the income declared by a poor businessman from Ahmadabad! He has declared only 150 Billion rupees! It is hard to save much in Ahmadabad nowadays!

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/ahmedabad/Businessman-declares-Rs-13000-crore-under-disclosure-scheme-fails-to-pay-tax/articleshow/55748408.cms

Our real heroes are, however, two officers of the Karnataka Govt. who on their Govt. salaries have managed to save Rs 1.52 Billion!

http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/bangalore/Rs.-152-cr.-unearthed-in-3-days-two-Karnataka-officials-suspended/article16754145.ece

You see, vegetables are cheap in Bangalore! A frugal family can always save one or two billion rupees!

Update on growth of Bank Deposits in India after demonetization, 30-11-2016

This is a sequel to my blog post http://obvioustruths.blogspot.in/2016/11/will-ban-on-high-denomination-currency.html

Here is an update on how bank deposits are swelling after the ban on Rs. 500 and 1000 notes. The question is whether a high proportion of the banned notes would be deposited or exchanged. What is not deposited or exchanged will become trash, yielding a bonanza to the Government. You can see from the graph, however, that there is an almost steady increase in deposits/exchanges. A good proportion what can be expected to come in has already done that. 

What is the Govt. going to do about the millions of people who have deposited other peoples' money into their accounts to white wash the moola? Deal with millions of court cases?

I have a suggestion. Allow 50,000 staff members of loss making public sector companies to transfer to the Income Tax Dept! There is work to do there! 

Here is the updated listing of sources of this information: 

Pneumonia is in the News; where is preventive care?

Secretary Clinton’s pneumonia news had spread quickly around the world. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/12/us/politics/hillary-clinton-campaign-pneumonia.html?_r=0

A friend of ours in Bangalore was hospitalized by an attack of pneumonia and spent many days in the ICU. Both cases raised one question in my mind. Had the person been given a pneumonia vaccine injection earlier?  If not, why not?

This website run by CDC, a US Govt. agency, says that two-thirds of the adults in the US above 65 have taken pneumonia vaccine, but then one-third of the population in the US above 65 and not covered by the vaccine is over 15 million. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/pneumonia.htm

It is not, therefore, surprising that “each year in the United States, about 1 million people have to seek care in a hospital due to pneumonia, and about 50,000 people die from the disease. Most of the people affected by pneumonia in the United States are adults”. Their hospital and school systems ensure that children are pretty well covered by vaccines.

We are a long way off in India from protecting our adult population from avoidable cases of pneumonia. The poor state of health care for the bulk of the population makes this very difficult. The number of deaths in India due to flu and pneumonia is over 500,000 per year. 

For a moment, let us look at people like the readers of this blog. Many of them probably undergo an annual medical test costing a few thousand rupees. This usually includes a consultation with a doctor. Have you heard a doctor in that situation ask you if you have ever taken a pneumonia vaccine? Or, a flu vaccine? Suppose you are overweight, but not obese, and do not have condition like diabetes or high blood pressure. (To be labelled obese, an adult has to be about 30 pounds over the prescribed weight). Do you think that the doctor would talk to you about your weight and encourage you to shed some of it?

Benjamin Franklin said “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”. Why don’t our doctors focus on preventive care?

I will conclude that in most cases of death by pneumonia below the age of 80, the cause of death should be identified as “lack of preventive health care”. I am not saying that pneumonia vaccine will give you a guarantee of surviving an attack of pneumonia. It is enough for me if it significantly increases the chances that you will avoid the attack.

TRAI is against discriminatory tariffs

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has taken a stand against discriminatory pricing for Internet services. This is a step forward towards net neutrality. Visit 

http://www.trai.gov.in/WriteReadData/WhatsNew/Documents/Regulation_Data_Service.pdf

The Internet was born with much opposition from vested interests. There was a protocol war with the Internet protocols on one side and protocols favored by the telecom monopolies of the world at that time. A lot of effort was expended to try and save the monopolies from competition from new technology-oriented companies. The victory of a set of ideas promoting competition and innovation has brought rich dividends to the large global community of Internet users.

Many arguments had been used against net neutrality in India. One of them was that if you can have first and second class on trains, why can’t you have differential pricing for Internet services? Why can’t we give better services to those who pay us more? I would like to ask a question in this context: Can a taxi service tell me that they will take me free to one hotel but will charge me 50% more than usual fare to take me to other hotels? May be the first hotel is willing to pay you more; but you are a licensed service regulated in the public interest.

The existence of discrimination in one sector is no argument for introducing discrimination in other sectors. For instance, one cannot argue that even temples discriminate against women; therefore, telecom service providers should be free to charge women more for Internet services!

I have written earlier against the most severe form of discriminatory pricing that frightens away many potential users of the Internet. This is the business of charging a novice user several times the rate that is charged to those who pay a sizable monthly fee for a package. I am not talking about 50% or 100% higher cost for small users, but large multiples that are effectively punitive charges. It looks as the service providers are saying “How dare you small fry tread on the toes of mighty companies like ours and our big users?” Visit

The internet and education in the developing world - hopes and reality

In the article mentioned above, I have also discussed the foolishness of ignoring all other factors and expecting technology alone to solve major problems. For instance, 55% of the websites on the Internet show English as the language of their content. Indian Languages, including Hindi and Tamil, are among languages accounting for less than 0.1% of the websites each, but the bulk of the people in this country prefer to read information in their own languages, not in English. Newspaper statistics show this clearly. Challenges like this have to be understood and addressed if Internet usage in India is to become widespread among all sections of society. 

Kota’s dream factories – Coaching Classes for the IIT Entrance Exam

I posted a brief note on this topic a couple of days ago http://obvioustruths.blogspot.in/2014/05/coaching-classes-and-iit-joint-entrance.html

The current blog post is a follow-up note referring to an excellent cover story from the Business Today describing the Rs 1700 Crore coaching industry synonymous with the city of Kota. 

http://businesstoday.intoday.in/story/kota-coaching-institutes-brand-iit/1/194170.html The article is a year old – it is dated May 2013 – but remains very relevant. There are a few very good photographs conveying something about the city as seen by the student. It is a city of one million people. The average temperature can exceed 40 deg C in summer. The severe competition takes its own toll – the article mentions eleven psychiatrists practicing in the city. About a dozen students commit suicide every year despite this.

The current practice of the IIT Entrance Exams is that you are eliminated from the competition if you are not in the top 20 percent of those taking your school board exam.

All this tells us something about the harsh reality of growing up in India. Getting into the IIT is only part of the story. A small fraction of those who get in do so with their own handicaps – socio-economic ones, poor mastery over English which is the medium of instruction, diverse interests not aligned with the institutes’ curriculum, to list some. I heard in one IIT that typically about 10% of the students fail in calculus in their first year. I wish that something can be done to make the students’ life happier and more successful.

Srinivasan Ramani

Air Pollution kills!

I had traveled twice into West Bengal during the last six months or so. I would fly into Kolkata and drive down to Kharagpur. On both occasions, I was amazed and frightened by the amount of smoke one sees arising from fires lit on either side of the highway in the open fields. Air pollution is no longer an urban problem only. Thoughtless burning of agricultural waste in India could very well be a significant contributor to global warming, apart from being a cause of a number of health problems. 

Meanwhile, in our apartment building in Bangalore, we have been fighting fires being set every year to wild plant growth in a neighboring plot of Government land. So, three of us from the building worked to create a petition on the site Change.org (links given below). We need your help to get it off the ground. Will you take 30 seconds to sign it right now? You can sign our petition by clicking here.

The petition reads as follows: 

To: The Chief Minister of Karnataka, Shri Siddaramaiah,

Please ban burning of garbage and garden/hospital waste within city limits all over Karnataka, particularly by Government offices, parks and hospitals. Such burning endangers the health of millions." 

Here's why it's important:

The Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1981 provides authority to State Governments to ban burning of any material if it is likely to cause air pollution.

Despite this, burning of garden waste continues in most cities of India. Government offices, institutions and hospitals have vast areas of open urban land under their control, and are the most prominent garden waste burners. Municipality/ Corporation workers entrusted with sweeping and collecting of waste including garden waste set fire to heaps of garbage. Municipal parks also burn garden waste. Many hospitals burn hospital waste carelessly, creating dangerous pollution. The smelly smoke arising from fires of hospital waste gives an indication of the toxic fumes that are released.  The problem is particularly acute in places such as Bangalore, due to the added burdens of high population density and vehicular pollution.

The dangers of air pollution are well known. A News Release from the World Health Organization dated 25 March 2014 is titled “7 million premature deaths annually linked to air pollution”. http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2014/air-pollution/en/   It goes on to give the estimate that one in eight deaths world-wide are due to air pollution.

We urge you to prohibit the burning of garden waste as well as garbage within city limits, and make this a cognizable offence with immediate effect.  Please empower fire stations to enforce the no-burning rule and file First Information Reports. This is a simple measure that will improve the quality of life in our cities and reduce healthcare costs.  Please instruct government offices, institutions and parks to implement composting of garden waste. 

Srinivasan Ramani               Meera Joshi                   Amla Sirsi

You can sign our petition by clicking here. Thanks! 

Forthcoming Elections in the State of Karnataka, India

I don't know why, but I took some time to hunt out the list of candidates who are competing for the Legislative Assembly seat in my constituency. The site that helped me was:

http://electionaffairs.com/karnataka/assembly_elections_2013/ac_wise_nominations_karnataka_assembly_elections_2013.cfm?recordID=169

(Warning: This may not be an official website of the government).

As the next step, I wanted to see the affidavits filed by candidates in my constituency. They need to share information on their wealth, education, involvement in court cases if any. The following URL is supposed to give that information. 

http://eci.nic.in/eci_main/CurrentElections/ge2009/Affidavits_fs.htm

But when I selected Karnataka candidates, it said 

Server Error in '/' Application.

---

The resource cannot be found.

Description: HTTP 404. The resource you are looking for (or one of its dependencies) could have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable. Please review the following URL and make sure that it is spelled correctly.

Requested URL: /ge2009affidavits/ge2009affidavits.aspx

That is absolutely clear, isn’t it?  Like a law-abiding citizen, instead of griping about such things, I saw the affidavits of candidates in a few other constituencies like Karimnagar. What difference does this make anyway? Candidates in one constituency are very much like candidates in others!

Having worked in the computer field, I have a doubt though! Many computer applications land in trouble if you enter numbers beyond the range that the programmer has provided for. Perhaps, the Election Commission should ask its programmers to review if they have provided for an adequate number of digits for candidates to report their assets. The fact that these numbers could fit during the last election does not mean they will fit this time. You can get an idea of these numbers involved by looking at

http://www.deccanherald.com/content/326533/common-wealth-crorepatis.html

No one can say India is not a rich and prosperous nation. Jai Hind!

Srinivasan Ramani

Revenue of Indian ISPs compared to MVAS Revenue of Cell Phone Services Operators

A Press Release (dated July 2012) from the ISP Association of India, quoting Telecom Regulatory Authority of India indicates the ISP segment revenue as Rs 7,500 Crores per year (approximately US$ 1.4 Bln). Visit
http://www.ispai.in/ispai-view/pressreleaseview.php?pressReleaseId=8

Compare this with the figure of Rs 2 to 3 per month spent by cell phone users on apps as well as games (Visit my blog post
http://obvioustruths.blogspot.in/2012/09/the-reality-of-mobile-value-added.html
This is the nearest estimate I get to Internet related expenditure of cell phone users in India in 2012. The number of cell phone users in India was reported by the Times of India as being 929.37 million in July 2012. Visit
http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-07-05/telecom/32550630_1_base-touches-subscriber-base-wireline-segment 
Multiplying the number of users by Revenue per user we find that Indian cell phone users are not paying more than Rs 3600 Crores. This is probably an over-estimate, as the figure of Rs. 2 to 3 mentioned above cover apps as well as games. So, all of this amount may not count as expenditure on mobile Internet.

Srinivasan Ramani
October 20, 2012

Information & the Anti-Corruption Movement in India

If you had asked me two years ago if I expected to find a reduction in corruption in India during my lifetime, I would have said no. The situation had been so bad for so long, and was in fact getting worse. But now, suddenly, so much is happening so fast! 

It has been said that Internet based tools have speeded up political changes in many countries in the recent past. I don’t see much reason to believe that Internet based communication tools have made much difference on the Indian political scene. Of course there have been the famous (:=) remark about “cattle class” travel and the recent one about “mango men in a banana republic”. Most of us have read about them in newspapers or heard about them on TV. I do use Facebook, Twitter and Linked in, but I do not see many Indians using them for political activity.

All this calls for serious research – what is speeding up the anti-corruption ferment in India now? How has it become so rapid - so much so that now I worry about change being managed carefully so that the country does not become worse before it becomes better?

Let me hazard my guess. The major factors have been the arrival of independent TV channels on the scene, followed by a rapid increase in the number of such channels. Add to this Direct-To-Home telecasting and the Right to Information Act! You have enough to start a big change. The TV channels have even woken up our stodgy newspapers and made them significant players in the revolution.

How cozy would it have been for the political class to have stayed with the obedient Doordarshan as the only TV service provider? Did they foresee the current ferment? They have seen a few tsunamis now! But do they realize that the Indian climate change is going to be huge and irreversible? What do they plan to do about it? Will they play a role as agents of change or will they become the victims of change?

Srinivasan Ramani

The Reality of Mobile Value Added Services in India

Let me show the white flag first! I am techie at heart and I do believe that the mobile Internet has a great future in India. However, I believe that the future should not become the enemy of the present. We have to accept reality and cope with it in suitable ways. Let me come to the point of this article.

Mary Meeker of Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers made a presentation in May this year. Visit http://www.scribd.com/doc/95259089/KPCB-Internet-Trends-2012

Among the statistics she has presented are the following:

1. India has the third largest number of Internet users (121 Mln) in the world. The number increased during 2008-2011 by 69 Mln to reach the figure of 121 Mln. Compare this growth with the 15 Mln in the USA!
2. India has 39 Mln 3G subscribers, growing at the rate of 841% year on year as against the 115% of China and the 31% of the US.
3. The percentage of Internet traffic carried by cell phones in India has already overtaken the Internet traffic carried by desktops in the country by April 2012.

Some of my friends abroad got quite excited by all this and sent me emails celebrating India’s victory!

I was aware of other statistics which presented a different picture. Visit
http://www.ccaoi.in/UI/links/fwresearch/Mobile%20Conceltation%20paper.pdf

Consultation Paper No 5/2011 put out by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India:

Mobile Value Added Services (MVAS), 21st July, 2011. The key points I take from this paper are:

1. The average revenue per user (ARPU) per month in March 2011 was Rs 100 in the case of GSM users and Rs 66 in the case of CDMA users. This covered revenue from voice services as well as other services.
2. Non-voice revenues were 11% of all mobile revenues, that is Rs 11/month. 60% of this came from SMS revenues, that is, say, Rs 7. Internet related services earned 9% of all MVAS revenues, which is about Rs 1/month per subscriber.
3. Major uses of the SMS services were:
4. Requests for ringtone downloads, seeking information like news, cricket scores, astrological predictions, subscribing to jokes and accessing other such services

You might think that a lot would have changed since May 2011. Another source
http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-07-04/news/32537173_1_mobile-vas-market-mvas-arpu
quoting a study by IAMAI-IMRB study, gives some updates. My take from this Economic Times report is:

1. The number of mobile Internet users in India in March 2012 was 48 Mln.
2. The average revenue was Rs 96 per GSM user and Rs 73 per CDMA user.
3. Average user spend on MVAS was 27 per cent of the ARPU, estimated to be roughly Rs 24/month.
4. Of the Rs 24 per month, 27% went into ringtones, 17% into SMS based applications; mobile apps took 10% while games took 8%. So, mobile apps took roughly Rs 2 to 3 per month.
5. The report predicted that ARPU will increase by 5-8% over the coming years.

So, here is the reality: The average Indian user did not spend even 10 U.S. cents per month on mobile apps and games! What does all this mean to us? I believe:

We should not jump to the conclusion that mobile Internet is suddenly going to make a big difference to people in rural areas, who constitute two-thirds of cell phone users.

We should not under-estimate the value of providing SMS based services to the majority of users. They stay away from mobile Internet because they find it difficult to download and install apps, and to use browsers. They are afraid of the cost. Being told that the cost is 10 paise per 10 KB of data transfer does not mean anything to them. To me it translates into Rs 10,000 per Gigabyte! Being told that they would have to pay Rs 98 per month for a 1 GB package (or something like that) is itself frightening to them. That is without their really reading the small print. Anything in excess of 1 GB is usually charged at 10 paise per 10 KB again! It appears that this is a totally counter-productive strategy – charging novice users making a beginning with web-content at hundred times what is obviously a sustainable rate. It is equally counter-productive to threaten novice users with the risk of huge bills if they accidentally end up using more than what is their quota.

What about the cost of SMS? There are student packages that offer them a quota of a hundred outgoing SMSs per day for fifty or sixty rupees a month. That indicates that the real cost of an SMS to the service provider is less than two paise!

These issues have been particularly important to me, as one working in technology for education. Is there any chance that low cost cell-phones in small towns and rural areas could promote school-level learning in some way? I believe that this is possible. An associated post in my other blog http://newstudentresearch.blogspot.in/2012/09/apps-that-make-low-end-cell-phones.html briefly describes one of my efforts in this direction. 

If you are in India, you can try out this simple service that enables to test their knowledge of English comprehension using only SMS messages. Students can voluntarily take a monthly test without any fear of failure from anywhere, at any time. I believe that such voluntary tests can sensitise them to the challenge they are facing. Teachers, family and friends can encourage them to read books beyond textbooks and improve their English. They can discuss questions and help students to learn new words. You can access this service over SMS, if you are in India. Visit http://www.hydrusworld.org/Tests over SMS.html 

You can use an Instant Messaging interface to access the same service if you are on the Internet. Visit http://www.hydrusworld.org/Tests over IM.html

Srinivasan Ramani