Gram Marg Project

= The Gram Marg Project = The Gram Marg project "Enabling Rural India Digitally" is run by IIT Bombay as part of the Digital India Initiative. Gram Marg literally means road map - "A road map to rural connectivity". Its inception began in the year 2012 with setting up India's first TV White Space test bed in the Palghar district of Maharashtra. Gram Marg's main airm is to develop solutions and digitally empower rural, remote, under-served areas in India through Internet connectivity and thereby contributing to national growth and development. It came up as an affordable sustainable solution for rural broadband. Gram Marg is involved in both research, development of solutions and technoloies for rural broadband as well as testing the feasibility of implementation and deployment of technology on the ground and its sustainable viability.

Read more at : http://www.grammarg.in, especially overview presentation http://grammarg.in/MozillaPPTforwebsiteFINAL.pdf

Vision
To become a technology enabler and social partner to bridge the digital divide and bring about digital empowerment through rural broadband connectivity

Mission

 * To perform research and development of solutions to connect the remote, underserved rural areas of India
 * To develop a scalable, low cost technology for affordable Internet connectivity in the villages
 * To perform research and development of solutions for implementation of applications and services in Gram Panchayat kioks, Primary Health Care centres, schools and Anganwadis
 * Creation of a sustainable business model supporting Public Private Panchayat Partnership (4P model development)
 * To study the social and economic impact of Internet connectivity

Number of Households in Villages under Assessment Study

 * 3 villages with 1146 households: 547 households in Dhuktan 300 in Khamloli, and 298 in Bahadoli
 * ~2258 individuals surveyed
 * 3 Gram Panchayat kioks
 * 1 ATM setup at Gram Panchyat kiosk

Indicators of success (KPIs)

 * 1) Number of e-Governance schemes villagers acquired knowledge of
 * 2) Number of e-Gov schemes implemented
 * 3) Number of trips saved to taluk related government schemes
 * 4) Amount of money and duration of time (daily wages) saved due to e-Governance

Impact assessment study leads to

 * social and economic development of the villages
 * health and sanitation
 * beneficial impact on school education
 * skill enhancement and development
 * influence on quality of life indicators

Partners

 * IIT Bombay, Informatics Networks Lab at the Electrical Engineering Department,
 * Tata Trusts
 * Tata Teleservices Limited
 * Government of India through Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, Department of Electronics and Information Technology
 * BBNL
 * CISCO
 * ATC India
 * CSC
 * Pukar
 * Kirkat Communicaitons

More info
Gram Marg wins Mozilla’s ‘Equal Rating Innovation Challenge’, http://www.iitb.ac.in/en/story/project-affordable-rural-broadband-wins-mozilla’s-‘equal-rating-innovation-challenge’