BAREFOOT COLLEGE-Empowering villages and women

Established in 1972,by Mr.Bunker Roy, the Barefoot College is a non-government organization that has been providing basic services and solutions to problems in rural communities, with the objective of making them self-sufficient and sustainable. These ‘Barefoot solutions’ can be broadly categorized into solar energy, water, education, health care, rural handicrafts, people’s action, communication, women’s empowerment and wasteland development. It is located at Tilonia village, Rajasthan, India.

The WBSCES (Women Barefoot Solar Cooker Engineers Society) is the first registered association of semiliterate and literate women who complete the full fabrication and production of parabolic solar cookers. The solar engineering program at Barefoot College started in India in the 1990s. As of December 2007, Indian Barefoot solar engineers had installed – with absolutely no aid from urban professionals – 8,700 solar units, generating 500 kilowatts (kW) per day, and manufactured 4,100 solar lanterns. As a result, 574 villages and hamlets (nearly 100,000 people) as well as 870 schools now have solar electricity.

The organization also provides training to budding engineers from countries like Bhutan, Africa etc. During their six months of training, the women are taught by other semi-literate and illiterate women:

• to handle sophisticated charge controllers and inverters (solar cells produce direct current (DC) which is converted into standard alternating current (AC) using an inverter),
• to install solar panels and link them to batteries,
• to build solar lanterns and
to establish a local electronic workshop where they can carry out all major and minor repairs to the solar power system themselves.

The 2^nd National Conference On Energy at MITS, Lakshmangarh , was enlightened in real sense by presence of solar engineers. Mr. Bhagwat Nandan, Solar program Coordinator stated, “Women from poor and neglected rural communities, live a life of many hardships and the organization is pleased to help such women in earning their livelihood”. Mrs.Shahnaz Bano a resident of Kishangarh village is a vivid example of such proud women of the organization. She has studied till 3^rd standard and works as a Solar engineer trainer in the organization.

With little guidance, encouragement and space to grow, the people who have always been considered ‘very ordinary’ and written off by society are exhibiting their talent and abilities and are doing extraordinary things that defy description.

The emancipation of women, i.e. their liberation from religious, legal, economic, and sexual oppression, their access to higher education, and their escape from narrow gender roles is not easily achieved. The struggle for sexual equality has a long history and is likely to continue for some time; but with organizations like Barefoot College, our country is really a leader in empowering women.

TECHNO-TERROR

September 11, 2001- TWIN TOWER ATTACK

March7, 2006-THREE BOMBS RIPPED THROUGH VARANASI

July11, 2006-7 BOMB BLAST IN MUMBAI’S SUBURBAN RAILWAYS

December 13, 2001- ATTACK ON INDIAN PARLIAMENT

March 27, 2008-PARLIAMENT ATTACK

May, 2008- 8 SERIAL BLAST ROCK JAIPUR

July 25, 2008- 9 BLASTS ROCK BANGALORE

September 27, 2008- BLAST IN DELHI’S FLOWER MARKET

And this list continues……………

There is an old truism –" we can not stop progress". The truism has been used to justify investments in technologies that could potentially not only harm people but wipe out the entire planet. Yes, what I am talking about is the effect of progress in technology on terrorism. While the progress can not be stopped, we still should think carefully about the consequences of the technologies that we invent. Particularly because since September 11, 2001, we always wonder when will the next terrorist attack occur?

Well undoubtedly technology increases terrorism's potency and it would be really ridiculous to argue that tools and new softwares that are being invented for our benefits are actually not for the same!

• GOOGLE EARTH-This tool from google is really a cake for the terrorists as it gives an access to aerial views of places to be attacked. For example, this time the epicenter was JFK international airport in New York though luckily this attack was prevented but CNN revealed an interesting fact that terrorists have used Google Earth to get access to aerial views of airport facilities. Isn't it hard to believe?

Well to add more to this let me tell you another fact, when you install the tool, the default address that it suggests you visit is: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue - the White House!

• SOCIAL NETWORKS- It is no secret that modern day terrorist organizations form intricate networks. Unlike a lot of other networks, these are very sparse, with isolated cells working without direct supervision of terrorist leaders. What is remarkable about these and other networks are the structure, because by understanding the structure and the way that it evolves, it is possible to infer a lot about a network,

The rising social networking sites look very promising to all of us. Certainly they are harmless, right? Well things are not so clear cut and if you think so then you are absolutely wrong. For example, just like we are using LinkedIn to establish business connections, terrorists might use it to figure out who is connected to whom. When you search for a person, LinkedIn tells you how you are connected to them. What can be exploited is the fact that if you are just one degree away from someone, you know who they know. This information can be used to reconstruct a subset of the network.

So all you orkut users beware!

• PHOTOSHARING The recent explosion in photo sharing and image search engines allows us to look up peoples pictures. While this has been an uplifting phenomenon, there is a room for misuse also. The problem is that photos contain an enormous amount of information as they reveal what we look like, but they also often show our friends and family.

The technological progress is unstoppable and these can be used in a bad way by the "evil doers". Once a technology is born, there is no way for it to be restricted on a long-term basis. It is knowledge, and knowledge cannot be stopped with wire fences. So why do we need to think about these things? Simply because it is always better to pause and think about the implications, than blindly rush through things. Just because something is cool does not mean that it is not dangerous. And beyond cool, we can be just a bit more careful. Does Google Earth need to have the White House address by default? Probably not.

The IB(Intelligence Bureau in India) has been constantly preparing dossiers to prove that that terrorists connected to leading terror outfits as the Lashkar-e-Taiba, al-Qaeda and the Jaish-e-Mohammed are tech-savvy often using coded words and pictures to communicate over the Internet.

Adding more threat to us is the fact that the Radical Muslim and other extremists have mastered the use of the Internet as a tool for propaganda, organizing and education. They are way ahead of the curve in terms of using Internet technologies. Right now it's a clear field for the bad guys!

Researchers at the University of Arizona are developing a tool that uses these clues to automate the analysis of online jihadism. The Dark Web project aims to scour websites, forums and chat rooms to find the Internet's most prolific and influential jihadists and learn how they reel in adherents.

Dark Web (a project at university of Arizona) is most likely to crimp “al-Qaida University on the Web", the mass of websites where potential terrorists learn their trade, from making explosives to planning attacks.

The terrorists use extravagant tools that can hide messages within the photographic image's dots (stenography), satellite mobiles that encode communication and so on.

All these technologies are even widespread on the mobiles which we use nowadays. These mobiles encode our conversation, still in a relatively simple way, so that absolute security is not offered. The issue immediately raised is how and why such technologies have been released in the market, since the fact that they are to be used by bloodthirsty terrorists to assassinate thousands of people, is certain.

The questions which knock our mind is-"to what extent should we accept "dangerous" technology ban? Should that be Cryptography? Should that be Flight Simulation Programs? (Let us not forget that it is quite possible that the terrorists had been trained as to how to approach their targets using the Microsoft Flight Simulator program, one amongst the most common programs in the world.) On the other side, if one comes to think about it, the technological instrument utilized to drag thousands of people to the realms of Armageddon was the complicated yet common jet plane. Do we also have to ban flight technology? Really not!

Well the key is to understand the fact that how a small virus in a system affects the whole system and how to improve the immunity of the system.Yes,we should accept these practical realities and think of ways to use technology against the rising class of technical-scientific intelligentsia(terrorism).