HP helps Cuddalore villagers make a living

The Week By Nikhil Raghavan: "When most agencies were into Band-Aid relief, Hewlett-Packard (HP) came to tsunami-hit Cuddalore with technology. It made relief measures easy by linking affected villages in the district with Web cameras. HP then gave the fishing community, which had lost its means to live, another hook and line—digital cameras and rural theatre kits (public announcement and movie screening systems).

Several men have now become professional photographers and women rent out the theatre kits at local festivals and gatherings. "If not for the tsunami, companies like HP would not have provided high-technology aids to people of a fishing village. A disaster turned into an opportunity," said D. Jagannathan, project officer of District Rural Development Agency, which helped HP in identifying and training people.

"I earned Rs 1,300 in a month," said Mohandas, 24, a marginal farmer, who was trained to use the digital camera. His first task was to assist relief agencies document relief work. He now moves from assignment to assignment—to cover a family function or shoot dead cattle for insurance purposes.

Many members of women’s self-help groups in Nanamedu, Rasapettai, Mandharakuppam, Thiruchopuram and Pettodai villages are now entrepreneurs thanks to HP. Ambujam and her friends at a self-help group were running a losing business, a small shop, when HP’s offer came along. It gave them a VCD/DVD player, a digital projector, speakers and screen. The priest at the local temple offered them a chance to use the kit for the festival. "We got Rs 100 the first time," said Ambujam.

Subsequently, the group has done 10 various assignments, including marriages and village functions, making Rs 2,350 in a month. With the business looking lucrative, even the menfolk have now started helping them.

HP also gave computers to the government girls higher secondary schools in Cuddalore Old Town and Parangipettai, and the panchayath union middle school in Kothattai. "Many students in lower classes take their minds off the trauma of tsunami by playing educational games on computers. Others learn how to type using the interactive applications installed. They are taught various subjects, too," said Nasiyat Nisha, a teacher. In normal situations, schools like hers would never have got into computer education in such a way.

According to Anand Tawker, director of Emerging Market Solutions, HP, it was "HP’s initiative in Kuppam in Andhra Pradesh that provided the knowledge for the Cuddalore thrust". In a three-year alliance with the state government, it is building an HP i-community in Kuppam. It includes four villages with 3.20 lakh people.

An HP i-community is a region where information and communication technology is strategically deployed to improve literacy, job creation, income, access to government services, education and health care. Very soon, Cuddalore will go the Kuppam way, thanks to the tsunami. "