Mobile Media and Revolution of Indian Rural Society

According to UNESCO, fostering the development of the media sector and achieving free, pluralistic, and independent media are pivotal in any country for development in general. Among other conditions, there has to be a good mix of public, private, and community media, and a professional capacity that includes use of digital technologies.

Considering Indian context, only digital device available to Indian rural community is mobile handset. While now 500 million Indians, nearly half of the population is using mobile phone, its use has been restricted only for voice communication or SMS for 95% of the users.

But for the most of the technology visionaries, mobile phone is an amazing device for future. It is your TV, video phone, Internet, personal computer and credit card all merged into one single device. Revolution in mobile data technology by Iphone, Storm or Androids revealed virtually all the informatics need of the modern society can be punched into a single mobile handset.

Now keep that perspective for rural India. Almost a century and half back, Swami Vivekananda realized heart of India lives in the villages and it is there, people are suffering primarily because they are off the grid from advancement made by urban India. Among many maladies that are holding rural Indians to catapult into 21st century, one of the most important one is the availability of the market. For rural peasantry, local rural market is the only market he has access for selling his product. Nobody except a few local merchants know about his produce which might be one of the best quality in the world.

LokMangal rural media is going to transform that despair of the rural producers. Now they will have means to expand their market to whole India. Their firm produce, irrespective of the quantities, will be known to the rest of the world! It may sound like a fiction but reality of innovation has always proven to be more exciting and promising to the people.