Gautam Doshi, a friend of ours who works at Intel visited us last month for a few days. He wanted to "immersively" find technical solutions to rural problems; to see what solutions Intel may have to offer here...

It was good to have him over, to sample a different world-view (both parties). He brought along, among other gizmos, an Intel Classmate PC (laptop), which of course, immediately took Badri Baba's fancy. This is the competition for the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child project).

We talked, night and day, with breaks to eat, sleep and walk. One idea that was thrown up was that of a resource centre with a computer and Internet connectivity. How will this help villagers? adults? women? children? Would it be used for Education? Access to Information? Storing and Sharing of indigenous knowledge? Income generation? Services? (e-ticketing, land transactions, certificates) Knowledge and Ideas exchange?

The possibilities are endless, but Sonati and I felt  that whatever is planned or implemented, the focus should be on something that will strengthen/rejuvenate the sense of community among the villagers. With increasing nuclearisation of families and migration, this sense of community is unravelling.

A generation ago, there was no road down to Salem from here, and many of the older villagers  have spoken of the time when they would go down to the shandy at Pappanaickenpatti, some 25 km from here, once in six months, with a sack of kadukkai (harda/shilekha/terminalia chebula) on their backs and return with enough salt and matches to last them six months. This was what they needed (on a regular basis) from the "outside world"; they were self-sufficient within the village community to an amazing extent. This self-sufficiency was not only with respect to physical things like food, but also, for example, with respect to things like property disputes which were resolved within the village itself. Now this self-sufficiency is on the wane.

What Sonati and I feel (and everyone feel free to comment) is that we cannot approach the issue with the blinkers of our urban, middle-class culture. Our needs are not the villagers' needs. We need to be able to look at  the strengths of their culture and try to reinforce them, and not weaken them.  Many a time, doing nothing at all may be a better thing (from the standpoint of the village community), than "top-down" intervention, however well-intentioned.