The Indian Space Research Organisation Chairman G. Madhavan Nair said that the ISRO was in the process of designing a satellite for providing village connectivity.

He was speaking after receiving the K.R. Narayanan Award presented by the K.R. Narayanan Foundation. He said there were about 600,000 villages in the country, of which at least 50,000 did not have any type of connectivity.

He said technology should be used to solve the problems faced by the people, especially those living in villages. He said the setting up of village resource centres (VRC) in association with various agencies had provided benefits of space and other IT-enabled services directly to the common man. The VRC was acting as a single window delivery mechanism in areas of education, health, nutrition, agriculture, water, weather and environment.

He said tele-education and telemedicine facilities were being provided by the ISRO to the villages. Teachers with specialist knowledge were very few. Through the tele-education programmes, classrooms were being beamed to villages and teachers could interact and communicate with the students. Likewise, telemedicine delivered healthcare at the doorstep of remote villages.

Mr. Nair said lot of information provided by satellites could be used by villages for planning local activities. He said a suggestion of Kerala High Court Chief Justice S.R Bannurmath for networking all the high courts thorough satellite would be seriously taken up with the ISRO.

Mr.Bannurmath; former Madras High Court Acting Chief Justice K. Narayana Kurup; former Union Minister P.C. Thomas; and former Works Minister Mons Joseph spoke.

V.P. Sajeendran, vice-chairman, K.R. Narayanan Foundation, welcomed the gathering. Uzhavoor Vijayan, Chairman, presided.

Source: Hindu.com