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Note on Code Swaraj Barefoot College is an amazing place. Bunker founded it in 1972, and it currently occupies a large campus in the middle of Rajasthan in near the village of Tilonia. Their signature initiative is solar lanterns. They bring in women from villages throughout the world and teach them how to build and maintain the solar lanterns. They learn to solder, how to read schematics, and how to train others. The women go home and are able to provide light for their villages, allowing students and adults to learn after dark. The solar power is used for a number of other tasks, such as charging cell phones.

In addition, Barefoot college has developed solar cookers, water reclamation projects, solar powered water desalination, trash disposal systems, and much more. They’ve worked with Apple on systems to allow children to get an education at night even if they spend the days working in the fields. Recent Ph.D. students come spend a year at Tilonia on post-docs to create even more innovative technology, then stay to deploy it into rural India and the world.

Knowledge springs from the ground up. One can focus on national governments, but to do so would be to ignore the countless small libraries, schools, the knowledge of elders in villages, the traditional lore kept in temples and Ayurvedic dispensaries, and many other storehouses of knowledge.

Democratizing information is a goal that also provides an opportunity for cross-fertilization between the U.S. and India. Farmers in both countries, for example, share common concerns about being able to access the software and repair their farm machinery or reuse their seeds. Both the U.S. and India have strong rural traditions and immense resources in small towns throughout the countryside. America-Bharat Bhai Bhai would be very powerful! The 3.5 million persons of Indian origin in America provide a strong base for building that partnership.

Sam Pitroda often speaks of democratizing information. This is an aspirational goal. It is not one single database that can be liberated. Democratizing information is a fundamental change in the production and consumption of knowledge. Universal access to knowledge is the promise of our times, and democratizing information would be the result. We must work towards this aspirational goal.

My Own Discovery of India

India and the United States are the two biggest democracies in the world, both with a rich heritage of fighting for freedom and the rule of law. It is perhaps presumptuous for a non-resident non-Indian such as myself to be giving so much