This Portal Is Not An Indian Wikipedia, But Claims It Is Democratising Data For People Empowerment

Did you always long for an India-focused Wikipedia that would provide all relevant information about the country? Well, you are there, almost. A couple of days ago, the Indian government has launched Vikaspedia, a multi-lingual portal that enables access to crucial information across six key areas – agriculture, health, education, social welfare, energy and e-governance. The site also features a handful of G2C (government to citizen) and G2B (government to business) services besides discussion forums, impact stories/case studies, learning resources, mobile app downloads, and news & events.

Vikaspedia is currently available in five languages including Hindi, English, Assamese, Marathi and Telugu. But going forward, there are plan to make it accessible in all 22 Indian languages.

The portal is a part of the India Development Gateway (IDG) initiative, aimed at offering information and ICT-based knowledge products and services in the social development domain. IDG is being run by the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY). Vikaspedia has been developed by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Hyderabad.

So how does Vikaspedia bring value to our everyday life? Since it is a government-run information portal and not a crowd-sourced Indian Wiki, don’t expect to find interesting ‘Leaks’ here that will give you an insight into State documents and policy-making. But this one promises to be better than the run-of-the-mill government repositories.

For one, authorities say it is part of the initiative to democratise information, leveraging the power of the Internet. And that claim is true to some extent. Earlier, fast, hassle-free access to real-time and crucial data was quite unthinkable and people had to pay for it as well. But from now on, most of it will be made available for free. Of course, that doesn’t mean that the paid RTI (Right To Information) services will be scrapped any time soon. But with Vikaspedia in place, one can access the essential information for free.

Moreover, the portal gives you a fair idea of what’s currently happening in the e-governance space. The section on ‘Mobile Governance’ is especially relevant, given the fact that India has around 110 million mobile Internet users, out of which 25 million are in rural India. In fact, 70% of rural India’s active Internet population access the Web via mobile phones while 42% of rural India’s users prefer using the Internet in local languages.

“As the rural landscape in India is set to take the advantage of the flourishing ICT initiatives pioneered by various institutions, more specifically the Common Service Centres (CSCs), Vikaspedia offers the much required content and services in local languages that makes the difference in the lives of the people,” the site says. That essentially underlines that Vikaspedia can enter the big league as the information portal supports regional languages and focuses on e-governance services/mobile seva available across the country. The site also features a number of utility apps for free download including Ask An Expert, SHELTOR (Student HostEL locator) and MOTHER (MObile based maTernal HEalth awaReness), an app for monitoring maternal health.

While launching the portal, J Satyanarayana, Secretary of DeitY, noted that Wikipedia, an information repository built on online crowdsourcing of content, is so popular that it is being used for official and legal purposes. Although Vikaspedia is not in the same space, it will be a single-point reference for the above six fields, featuring content specific to the Indian context.

Those still pining for an Indian Wiki will be pleasantly surprised when you find a few similar features even on Vikaspedia. For instance, you can register here as a content contributor that will allow you to add a new page of content, edit the existing content and create discussion topics. We are still not sure if the portal is open to content crowdsourcing and editing just like Wikipedia does, but this option looks quite suggestive. Registering as a member is a breeze but last we tried registering as a content contributor, an error message came up persistently. Does it mean the feature is not currently available to the masses?

That’s not exactly democratising data but we feel that at the initial stage, only authorised institutions/organisations can deliver and edit content, instead of individual contributors. But even then, an interactive repository of developmental data (after all, members can still participate in discussions and provide feedback), along with easy access, could just be the first step towards more transparent governance and people empowerment. Vikaspedia can bridge the knowledge divide and therefore, the opportunity divide, which may gradually ensure the economic and social well-being of India’s 1.3 billion-strong population.

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