From Wednesday’s Washington Post, an excellent article on the Internet revolution slowly spreading across Bangladesh.
Internet Extends Reach Of Bangladeshi Villagers
Cellphone-Linked Computers Help Break Rural Isolation
By Kevin Sullivan
CHARKHAI, Bangladesh — The village doctor’s diagnosis was dire: Marium needed immediate surgery to replace two heart valves.
The 28-year-old mother of three said she was confused and terrified. She could barely imagine open-heart surgery. She had no idea how her family of farm laborers could pay for an operation that would cost $4,000.
The next day, Sept. 16, her father went to see Mahbubul Ambia, who had recently installed the only Internet connection for 20 miles in far northeastern Bangladesh. Ambia sat down at a computer, connected to the Internet by a cable plugged into his cellphone, and searched for cardiac specialists in Dhaka, the capital, 140 miles away. He found one and made an appointment for Marium, who like many people here goes by just one name. The specialist examined her and said she needed only a routine surgical procedure that cost $500.
“I felt a very deep sense of relief,” Marium said.
Villages in one of the world’s poorest countries, long isolated by distance and deprivation, are getting their first Internet access, all connected over cellphones. And in the process, millions of people who have no land-line telephones, and often lack electricity and running water, in recent months have gained access to services considered basic in richer countries: weather reports, e-mail, even a doctor’s second opinion.
Read the rest here. (Registration is free and worth it for this piece alone.)
A stack of similar articles about the digital revolution in developing countries can be found here. Ideas for social entrepreneurs/commercial entrepreneurs among our readers…?
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On a different note, found this little gem in this week’s Economist – from the Letters to the Editor section. The Bangladeshi High Commission’s Press Minister ventilates:
Bangladesh’s constitution
SIR – Your reading of the constitutional conventions that led to Bangladesh’s president, Iajuddin Ahmed, becoming the head of the country’s interim government and the circumstances that led to his assumption of the office of chief adviser was wrong-headed (“Campaign of violence”, November 4th). The reason he is now “commander-in-chief of the armed forces and his own adviser” is that under the constitution the president is the military’s supreme commander and is allowed to assume the chief adviser’s office, provided certain conditions exist. Since all the constitutional steps were rigorously followed and the necessary conditions were fulfilled, your innuendo about an “unconstitutional concentration of power” is absolutely preposterous.
Fazal Kamal
Bangladesh High Commission
London
Doth the minister protest too much?
