Sarai and Arun Mehta at linux-delhi meet

[Supreet Sethi <supreet@xxxxxxxxx>]

    Arun Mehta is a Telecommunication engineer and internet activist. He is also the  CTO in a company called Radiophony, which has been asked by Stephen Hawking 
to develop a speech synthesizer for him -- his old one is DOS-based, and 
far from state of the art. They are not getting paid for this, but see a
 possibility for getting some funding at the right time. Not only would 
it be an honour to help this great man in any way, but the software could 
be useful to people with a variety of disabilities. We of course want 
this to be open-source, and would like to develop this on SourceForge. Would    Linux group be interested in collaborating in this?
        
Both Arun Mehta and Sarai are unhappy with the situation we find ourselves in,
in which the IT domain is limited to the elites. The Socy. for Telecom Empowerment(which Arun heads) is working on a proposal with the Salaam Balak Trust to set up a training institute for street children in IT. During the open software panel discussion at the Sarai Opening, Arun had asked if the Linux-delhi group would help develop a training course for the NIIT/Aptech style of semi-literate graduates (no offence meant here to those coming from those institutes, but I suspect that those who did become accomplished programmers out of their alumni learnt most of what they know by themselves). This course should be based not on the traditional, hierarchical system of teaching, but on cooperative learning in the Linux pattern. Perhaps such an intensive course for training programmers could also take in those of the street children which our basic course identifies as having a particular bent towards programming.
We are alos interested in a study of law as it is applied in Indian cyberspace or IT professionals, and what might be done to improve the situation.

Arun Mehta would like to come and present his idea at the Linux-delhi meeting on Sunday. Three members from the Sarai team will also like to attend.Any responses to these proposals are welcome. Please post them to dak@xxxxxxxxx, or at 
mehta@xxxxxxxx