Bangalore, April 17:

Innovators in cyberspace who add wealth to websites and other media with their creativity have a chance for recognition as the race is on for yet another edition of India’s ‘e-content’ awards.

Launched in October 2004, the contest at manthanaward.com is on once again, in partnership with the World Summit Award, American India Foundation and PlaNet Finance India.

“E-Content is an extremely important question. It can be ignored only at the cost of universal development. We are among the poorest nations in terms of having a presence on the web,” Osama Manzar, a key organiser of the awards, said. The goal of the contest is to dig out innovative websites and cyber projects from the ‘length and brea-dth’ of India and creativity ‘for and by the grassroots’.

In its 2005 competition, the Manthan Awards recognised 27 initiatives out of 104 nominations received in the eight diverse categories of e-business, e-entertainment, e-culture, e-learning, e-health, e-governance, e-science, and e-inclusion.

India, with its one-billion-plus population, had an estimated 5.4 million Internet connections (in December 2004). The second most-populous country in the world has approximately 23,000 websites. Manzar sees India as having ‘five e-content pillars’ of talent, innovation, market access, technology and connectivity. An entrepreneur and new-media specialist, Manzar has authored two books, “e-Content: Voices from the Ground (www.econtentworldwide.org)”, released at the World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva in 2003, and ‘The Internet Economy of India’, published in 2001.

His upcoming book is titled ‘ICT for Development in India: Where do we go from here?’. “The first book has attracted a whole new generation to use the web as a medium of information dissemination, and global reach — not only in English but in other regional Indian languages,” he said. Not all e-content is restricted to the Internet. There’s TV, radio, the web, portable media like CDs, DVDs and memory sticks, movies, mobiles, email, information kiosks, e-discussions, e-publishing, magazines with e-supplements, and more.

The last date for filing nominations for the awards this year is April 30. Manthan has already acknowledged a number of interesting projects, from the automated milk-collection system at akashganga.co.in to branded Kolhapuri footwear portal ToeHoldindia.com, coffee growers’ PlantersNet.com, database of grassroots innovation Honeybee Network sristi.org/honeybee.html, and the Kannada language script enabling software Nudi kagapa.org.

Also recognised were the Marathiworld.com portal for the Marathi community, zmqsoft.com electrophoresis e-learning course and Unicef’s Sisu Samrakshak for information dissemination and services for women and children, among others.

Vaachak is a text-to-speech software for Indian languages and English developed by Prologix in Lucknow and the Disability India Network is at www.disabilityindia.org. E-learning projects include the shivrai.co.in course to educate farmers in good agricultural practices. BookBox is a ‘jukebox’ of edutainment and multilingual animation books. On the e-government front, the Nisani

multipurpose national identity card, the Thiruvananthapuram City Police Portal at tvmcitypolice.org and the e-governance model to globalise the Indian agriculture — www.dacnet.nic.in — were among those that stood out.

Andhra Pradesh’s e-cops stands for ‘e-Computerised Operations for Police Services.’ Manzar sees India’s e-content future as very promising, for a number of reasons — one-third of India’s population comprises youth open to new technology, the country has one of the world’s largest diaspora populations, and it has probably the largest English-speaking population.

“There’s also a global realisation of India’s ancient knowledge base and wisdom in many areas like health,” he said.