Potholed roads of a village now lead to information superhighway

Potholed roads of a village now lead to information superhighway
TANMAYA KUMAR NANDA

NANGALCHAUDHARY (HARYANA), AUGUST 29: In the heart of Hryana, where the rattling roads are a close second to the lunar surface, where all you get to see for miles on end are bajra fields and brick kilns is a solitary PC in Nangal Chaudhary that holds out the promise of, well, the brave new world of Cyberia.

Obviously, Om Prakash Chautala is an impressionable man, or so it seems from his admiration of Chandrababu Naidu's efforts to cyberise Andhra Pradesh. Why else would he inaugurate Haryana's first village cyber cafe in Nangal Chaudhary, which, even by Deputy Commissioner V. Rajashekhar's admission, is ``one of the most backward villages in the district''.

Never mind. What matters, after all, is that the youngsters, and a few elders, are getting a chance to get on the Net, getting to know that a mouse is not just a rodent that eats your grain. ``It should be seen in conceptual terms, not just as a single PC,'' says Rajashekhar, who was instrumental in having the cyber cafe set up.

As of now, the cyber cafe, which was opened on July 30, has about 90 students queueing up for a drive down the information highway. And they don't seem to mind the fact that the room is slightly cramped, and doesn't have an AC. ``Actually, there's a slight cash crunch, so we didn't instal the AC,'' says Ishwar S. Assat, who's in charge of the training programme as well as the systems at the DC's office in Narnaul. ``Besides, if we instal an AC, there are bound to be some people who'll enrol just to spend an hour inside. We want to avoid that.''

Which is how you have eight bright-eyed youngsters hanging to every word that Assat says. At Rs 5 per hour, the kids seem to be getting their money's worth, though not all of them can quite comprehend what they are going to do with what they learn, even though they sometimes miss a college class to attend the computer course. ``If we don't get anything else, we'll take this up as a career,'' admits Mahender Singh, who's doing his Class XI from the local college.

The cyber cafe, in fact, seems to many like a touchstone that will change their lives. Even the village sarpanch, Shakuntala Devi, feels that the lone computer will do wonders for the village. ``People can write to each other, and they will also get to know what's happening in the world.'' Whether they will know or not is anybody's guess, but in an area where a very large number of families have someone or the other in the Armed Forces, e-mail facilities could well be a godsend.

But not everybody is as enthusiastic. ``I know what computers are, but I'm not going to learn,'' says 22-year-old Mukesh Kumar, who runs a photo studio a stone's throw away from the cyber cafe. At the other end of the spectrum is Sunil Kumar, who's originally from Nangal Chaudhary but is currently working as a computer operator in Gurgaon. ``I know some languages, but I was visiting, so I thought I would come and try and learn something about the Internet,'' he says.

Nangal Chaudhary has the privilege of having its own website -- nangalchaudhary.8k.com. But a word of warning: wear dark glasses before you log on. With bright, almost fluorescent colours adorning every page, the site is any designer's nightmare come true. And the language is a riot. Worse, the site also has incorrect data, showing things such as no post offices or banks, or primary health centres or even primary schools being in the village. ``Actually, this site wasn't designed by us, and all the figures are from the '91 census,'' explains Assat. ``But I'm redesigning the site with fresh figures, and it should be ready soon, probably within the month.'' Assat is also working on two more cyber cafes, one in Naseebpur and another in Kaniha.

Until then, content yourself with the knowledge that in a dry, dusty village in Haryana, some kid is trudging a tiring path along the information superhighway.