Developmental Informatics at IIT Bombay

a cross disciplinary group consisting of 6 faculty, 30 research staff and several students. The lab is working towards increasing access to information-- through the use of internet and communication technologies-- to communities in the developing world especially rural and small town India. The lab is supported by Indian Government funding sources as well as corporate and multi-lateral agencies to solve technical problems in local communities in sustainable ways. This paper focuses on two mature projects of the lab – one caters to Indian farmers while another helps with the education of tribal populations

395 Innovative ICT Tools for Information Provision in Agricultural Extension (December 2005)

Abstract—aAQUA is an online multilingual, multimedia Agricultural portal for disseminating information from and to the grassroots of the Indian agricultural community. aAQUA simultaneously addresses two major challenges in farmer outreach programs- geographic reach and customized delivery. It answers farmers queries based on the location, season, crop and other information provided by farmers. aAQUA makes use of novel database systems and information retrieval techniques like intelligent caching, offline access with intermittent synchronization, semantic-based search, etc. Agricultural content repositories (Digital Library), Agri-price information (Bhav Puchiye), farmer schemes and various operations support databases (aAQUA-QoS) have also emerged from the experience of aAQUA deployments. aAQUA's large scale deployment provides avenues for researchers to contribute in the areas of knowledge management, cross- lingual information retrieval, and providing accessible content for rural populations. Apart from Agriculture, aAQUA can be configured and customized for Expert advice over mobile networks and the internet in Education, Healthcare and other domains of interest to a developing population. This paper will showcase the utility of various component databases built into aAQUA to enhance the QoS delivered to rural populations

Abstract

We have demonstrated the possibility of applying a modified genetic algorithm (GADO) to completely automate the design of a cell given only a behavioral description and optimization criteria such as power, area, speed or their combination. GADO maintains a population of potential standard cell designs. The designs are evaluated by (1) internal rules (2) MAGIC for design rule checks and (3) SPICE for correctness. Connections between transistors are encouraged by an influence check, which checks for broken connections and floating I/O nodes. Working inverters with arbitrary label placements are designed by evolution as a proof of concept. I

aAQUA - A Multilingual, Multimedia Forum for the community

aAQUA is an online multilingual, multimedia Question and Answer based community forum for disseminating information from and to the grassroots of the Indian Community. Arising out of this forum is development of content in one’s local language. Additionally, the content is more participative and, therefore, more localized in terms of needs and requirements, issues and solutions. 1