Manthan Award Winners

Digital Empowerment Foundation in
Association with America India Foundation felicitated the winners of the
Manthan- AIF Award 2006 in a grand ceremony witnessed by eminent academicians
and sociologists on 5^th August at the NCUI Auditorium in New Delhi.
The Annual Awards supported and based on the World Summit Awards were
conceptualized in the year 2004 and was a runaway success this year.

ITVidya.com were the outreach partners and it was a pleasure for me to meet and witness several participants and award winners who are creating and disseminating tremendous knowledge to the community.

The nominations and winning list of the e-Content creators and their
products of 250 total nominations included 216 valid nominations; 14
categories; 32 winners; 5 special mentions, and 4 appreciations for community
radio initiatives. Regional and cultural representations were equally vivid.

“I am delighted by the overwhelming response; the nominations this year were
twice the last year. We have attempted to recognize the immense value that the
ICT initiatives have created through their works in the various parts of the
country and feel proud of the success of Manthan-AIF Award 2006 ” said Osama
Manzar; Founder DEF and Chairman and Jury member of the Manthan-AIF Awards.

Across the 14 categories, the winners have initiated or accomplished
extraordinary works in empowering the masses through technology. The
nominations list: an interesting revelation across States and Union Territories.
Maharashtra, Delhi and Uttaranchal topped the list with 52, 31 and 13 nominations while Nagaland, Pondicherry and Chandigarh had 1 nomination each while the rest interspersed in between. Category wise the
nominations and winning list is a salad bowl preparation. E-Governance,
e-Inclusion and livelihood, e-learning, e-education, were the top notch ones
while e-health, e-news, e-entertainment and few others were the laggards in
filing nominations. E-Governance, e-Inclusion & Livelihood and e-Learning
took the nomination filing lead.

Equally apparent were the cultural and linguistic emergence of e-Content
products and services. If the Ananda Utsav site in e-Culture served its
audiences in both English and Bengali language, the other picture is of Kannada
Logo serving its customers and users in local Kannada language.

The Manthan-AIF 2006 witnessed the presence of academicians and other
dignitaries widely acknowledged in the field of Information Communication
Technology. Dr. R. A. Mashelkar, DG, CSIR;  Mr. Wajahat Habibullah, Chief
Information Commissioner, India;  Prof. Anil Gupta, IIMA and National
Innovation Foundation; Mr. Avdesh Kaushal, RLEK; Mr. Sachin Pilot, MP were
among the distinguished guests whose presence in the Manthan-AIF Award 2006
added the much needed value and utility to the purpose.

Webel Mediatronics Limited is a winner in the e-Learning category. This w:st="on">West Bengal based organisation has pioneered in the
development of integrated system for education of people with visual
impairments. The systems address solutions to major obstacles in disseminating
Braille education in vernacular languages. As of now, after successfully
implementing these systems at around 110 schools in 22 states all over the
country, WML has been able to provide necessary infrastructure to the blinds
schools to develop unlimited reading material in Braille for visually impaired
community. This offline product is available in 13 Indian languages including
English.

Throughout the world, Logo is used in teaching programming and graphical
concepts to children between the ages of 9-14 yrs and usually English is used
medium to teach Logo. English medium students have the advantage of studying
Logo in India but Kannada medium (or any other Indian language students) is deprived of
learning a programming language. Karnataka based Vishva Kannada Softech, a
winner in e-Localisation category has developed a Kannada version of Logo, a
programming language at the school level that will tap into this potential and
hone student's skills, especially in rural areas. The Kannada version of Logo
is a simple tool to help children understand programming.

Bhojpuria.com is a winner in the e-Culture category. Jharkhand based
Infogate Exporters Pvt. Ltd has come out with the World's first Portal for
Bhojpuri Speaking people. The portal claims to provide a global platform for
more than 34 Crore Bhojpuri speaking across the Globe. While clicking on to the
site one can find News, Bhojpuri Songs, Bhojpuria Dukan, Free E-mail, Bhojpuri
E-greetings, ecards, details about Great Bhojpuria people, Bhojpuria culture,
Festivals etc.

Merinews is India's first participatory media platform, where citizen journalists
contribute news, interviews, pictures, news analysis, etc. Currently, Merinews,
a winner in the e-News category, offers a diverse set of categories for citizen
journalists from different fields. They can contribute news, features, interviews,
pictures, news analysis, book and film reviews, etc.

National Chemical Laboratory, Pune has produced IndFauna, an electronic
catalogue of Known Indian Fauna.  Development of IndFauna, a winner in the
e-environment category, has made it possible to access baseline data of all
Indian faunal resources at a single click of a mouse. Further, by using
multi-lingual engine this data can be accessed in six Indian languages viz.
Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Tamil, Teulgu, and Punjabi thus ensuring
dissemination of knowledge in languages that people understand the best and
covering nearly ¾ of the country.

StudentIndia.com is a dedicated information site for students based in
Maharashtra. A winner in the e-Education category the object of the site is to meet the
global requirement of students and partial educational awareness for parents to
guide their child. The online services provided are free of cost.

NIC has developed and implemented Prisons Management System (PMS)
application for Tihar Jail, Asia’s largest prison cell. PMS is a G-2-G and G-2-C
eGovernance tool and a winner in the e-Governance category. It has created a
transparent, simplified and efficient Prisoners’ Information Handling System
for all Prisoners who are lodged in the Tihar Prisons and their visitors.
Recording and tracking of all Prisoner movement activities within the Jail and
out side Jail are being recorded using the PMS.

Surat and Gujarat based   District Co-Operative Milk Online
Integrated Computerized Systems (OICS) is a technology innovation
 covering Milk Procurement, Marketing, Sales Distribution, Cattle Feed
Management, Materials Management, Maintenance Management, Document Management,
Human Resource and Financial Accounting, which is pivoted around 8 major
modules comprising on an approximate 1000 data entry forms, 120 query forms and
1500 reports.  It is estimated that more than half million records are
created each day in the computerized systems at different places. OICS is a
winner in the e-Business category.

Of special significance of this year’s Manthan Award is taking the bold
initiative in recognizing best community radio initiatives in the country.
Special mention can be made of the village and rustic Raghav Mahto and his FM
radio innovation in his Mansoorpur village in Vaishali district in Bihar.
Raghav and his DJ friend Sambhu created and developed a simple FM radio tool
that catered to the community needs in so many villages. The FM radio served
for more than two years before it was shut down in March this year by official
orders due to its illegal nature.

The appetite for knowing more of such other ICT and e-Content practices is
enhanced further given the huge figure of 32 winners for this year Manthan
Award. A reality check of the winners and special mention list reflects how the
e-Content scenario is building up. The e-Content practices are essentially
focusing on three areas: new innovations, new applications, new application and
distribution network.

Manthan Awards has been supported by various organizations in India.
ITVidya.com, Inomy, ICONGO, the confederation of NGOs in India
and IRAM are the supporters for the Manthan – AIF Awards. ICONGO, the knowledge partner,
has supported the initiative and attempts to broaden the scope of the Awards.
It has been successful in getting television rights for the Awards to be held
in 2007.

The Genesis of Manthan- AIF Award

The Manthan-AIF Award is a first of its kind initiative in w:st="on">India to
recognize the best practices in e-Content and Creativity. Launched in October
2004, by Digital Empowerment Foundation in partnership with World Summit Award,
and the American India Foundation, the Manthan Award emphasizes the importance
of e-Content & Creativity for and by the grassroots people and organizations. 
The Manthan Award 2005 recognized and awarded 27 initiatives out of 104
nominations received for 8 categories. It involves representatives from each
state and union territory of India and visualizes
the bridging of digital divide and narrowing of the content gap as its overall
goal.

About DEF

Set up in December 2002 Digital Empowerment Foundation is a not-for- profit
organisation catering to the Information Communication Technology needs for
grassroots empowerment and enablement. Dedicated and committed to work across
the country, DEF is concentrated on vital ICT areas of information, knowledge,
research, investigation, activism, consultancy, outreach, and advocacy and so
on

The Manthan-AIF Winners 2006

Manthan AIF Award 2006

Date: August 5, 2006

Venue: National Cooperative Union of w:st="on">India

3, Siri Institutional Area, August Kranti Marg, New Delhi-16

Annexure II

Partners for The Manthan-AIF Award 2006

• American w:st="on">India
  Foundation, Principal Partner
• The Government of
  Uttaranchal,
• Department of IT,
  Government of India
  ,
• PHD Chamber of Commerce
  & Industry
• e-Gov World,
• MetaLearn w:st="on">India ,
• DataQuest,
• IRAM,
• TFTP,
• Brand Reporter
• iCongo,
• ITVidya.com,
• Inomy Media Ltd.

Board Members of Manthan-AIF Award

• Mr. Bibek Deb Roy,
  Secretary General, PHD Chamber of Commerce & Industry
• Osama Manzar, Director and
  Founder, Digital Empowerment Foundation,
• Shankar Venkateswaran,
  Executive Director-India, American w:st="on">India Foundation, Madanmohan
  Rao,
• Research Director, AMIC, w:st="on">Singapore class=GramE> .

 The Nomination List for the Manthan-AIF Award 2006

Percentage of Nomination Category wise