[Wikimediaindia-l] Tamizh Nadu

[Srikanth Ramakrishnan]

Please note:
1. Tamil is not nisspelt as Thamizh or Tamizh, that is intentional.
2. This mail is an important one. It could pretty much give birth to a
massive digital movement that could aid Wikipedia and other projects like
OSM, and more.
3. This mail is a mix of discussions that happened over the list, the phone,
and of a few surveys done by me in Sathyamangalam and Gobichettipalayam
taluks of Erode district and a few in Ramnagar, Coimbatore City.

Dear all,
As you all should know by now, the Tamil Nadu government has already started
distribution of laptops and other paraphernalia.
This year, the Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu [ELCOT] has already
distributed 7000+ out of the targetted 9.12 lakh.
The students covered include School students, +2 students, UG and PG [Except
M.Phil and PhD] students.
The breakup of it is 60% goes to school and higher secondary/pre university
students, 32% to Arts and Science college students, 3% to Polytechnic
students and 2% to Engineering students.
Voters in the Nilgiris have already recieved laptops for their wards. [I,
however, inspite of being a student in Tamil Nadu, will not be recieving one
as my Voter registration is in K'taka]. However, my friends will recieve
them, and I can see how we can go about in getting them onto Open Source
projects.
As discussed, the laptop will have the ELCOT logo all across it both
physically and digitally. The Motherboard and other physical ICs will have
the ELCOT logo engraved on it, while you will see the logo on booting, with
Jayalalitaa's photo as a default screensaver[rumoured], similar to ELCOT
TVs.
The laptop runs on Bharat Open Operating System, or BOSS [again, as
discussed earlier], developed by a GoI entity, the Centre for Development of
Advanced Computing [C-DAC]. For a fourth gen Linux distribution[it was
launched in 2007], it is pretty lousy, bugged and has plenty of flaws.

9,12 lakh Laptops will be completely distributed by the end of the Academic
year.
In relation to this, a couple of us wrote to the Tamil Nadu Electricity
Generation and Distribution Company [TANGEDCO] regarding voltage and supply
issues as there is no point in having a laptop, with erratic power supply
and heavy fluctuations, [We came across a case of a laptop charger getting
fried in Gobichettipalayam].

As stated earlier, new textbooks under the Samacheer Kalvi provide links to
Wikipedia articles and feature images from the Wikimedia Commons.
This should be a morale booster for us, to provide better photographs and
media on the Commons and to make sure that the articles in question are
error free, even if it is on the English Wikipedia.


After all this nonsense, I ask a few questions to several groups of people:

1> The chapter, the Foundation office, and board members. This includes
Hisham Mundol, Bishakha Dutta, Achal Prabhala, Shiju Alex, Nitika Tandon et
al.
Are you willing to launch any school student oriented plan in South India,
[not limited to TN]?
I'm not asking for anything similar to the Campus Ambassadors program, but
more of a series of Seminars, workshops, academies, meetups, tutorials etc.
We need your support for such a mass scale program, as individually we
cannot achieve anything.

2> South Indian wikipedians, especially the Bangalore, Chennai and Kerala
communities.
Are you open to helping us out?
Especially Kerala, you are the most advanced in the Indic wiki sphere, will
you please help out your neighbour TN?

I'm willing to do as much as possible from my side[I'm not too good at
arranging meetups, when I say Wikipedia, people stare at me blankly, and I
can't explain it to them in Tamil, even though it is my mother tongue].


Please do consider this Golden opportunity.
There is plenty of potential out here.
The laptops run on Linux, which means, a big boost to Open Source software.
The primary target is school students, which means, more young editors [and
oldies in their late teens like me].

I couldn't think of how to say this, but somehow I just typed it and sent
it.

Note: If you consider this as SPAM, please IGNORE it. There is no need to
send me a mailing asking me to stop SPAMMING the list like last time.


--Regards,
Srikanth Ramakrishnan,
Coimbatore.
--------------------
If there is a Wolfram Alpha, there should also be a SheepRavanBeta no?
Between 1970 and 1990, India did nothing, but increase her population.
The city of Kuzhambathur was famous for Kuzhambu ... The British were unable
to pronounce and hence it became Coimbatore.
 DR Ratio is the ratio of number of dosais to number of rotis a person can
eat under common conditions. It is usually greater than 1.
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