Mission&Vision: Thoughts behind Akshar

In this series of posts, I’m going to spell down the fundamental thoughts, ideas and vision behind Akshar. Your comments are always welcome.

Everybody must have a Right to Use the Internet and the Web

The popularity and importance of internet is rapidly increasing. Today, there is a big push by the United Nations to make Internet access a human right. This push was made when it called for universal access to basic communication and information services at the UN Administrative Committee on Coordination. In some countries such as Estonia, France, Finland, and Greece, Internet access has already been made a human right.

If There’s a Right, There Comes a Duty

It’s easy to have rights be given on papers, but it’s difficult to have people be living with those rights. Of course, in developing countries, where the lives of a large portion of the population are still dominated by a never-ending tale of daily struggle for basic needs, having internet as a right would not be anything more than a joke. Still, it does not mean that internet is not at all useful for such under-privileged people. In fact, if we look internet from social prospective, rather than as a mere source of entertainment, we can start realizing that it can be the most beneficial communication and participation medium for fighting against the problems faced by such people and the world today.

The aspect of internet I’m talking about here is not something hypothetical; there are many real-world examples when internet has been a key in building opinion, spreading awareness, alerting people about calamities and epidemics and providing a platform for people to come and help those in trouble. Swine flu and Haiti earthquake being the recent examples. The role of internet in helping humanity to fight against these two catastrophes had been substantial.

It is clear that internet is important, and yes it will do good if it comes as a right, but only after when we have enabled everyone to exercise this right. Lack of resources and infrastructural gaps are going to be the major obstacles in bringing this condition to reality in near future, however, communal arrangements, where people of a village/town can be made to learn and take advantage of the internet, are surely possible to achieve even in present scenario.

The duty to make internet accessible to every individual is only one aspect of the spectrum. Another aspect is to make internet meaningful to every individual. Here meaningfulness has precisely one meaning: every individual, without any extra effort, must be able to understand the content made available on the internet and must be able to participate (interactive content) with the same level of comfort. Because it is not feasible (and not meaningful) to create a layer of translation below the web that will do this automatically, therefore, the perceived intention is to have a virtual infrastructure (above the web) that takes care of this only at places where it is expected/demanded. This way, regional content will flourish, realizing the meaningfulness aspect of the internet.

Akshar is One Such Virtual Infrastructure

With Akshar, we aim at creating one such infrastructure to provide for equal opportunities of expression and participation for all on the web. We believe that web must speak the language of people rather people be forced to speak the language of the web! Hence, if my friends in some far-flung village of a country, get a chance to interface with the internet, (thanks to community development programs), they shouldn’t feel like alien/underdeveloped only because they do not know the language of the web (English). they should be able to start using the internet at least for sharing there views and obtaining information as soon as they learn the technical particulars – no need to first get comfortable with English – which is impossible for many of average non-English speakers. The participation of such people and production of regional content will also diversify the internet culture and we’ll have a true virtual global villege in the form of web.

I guess the post has become quite large so I’ll talk more about Akshar in my future posts. Stay tuned!