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Strategies & Market Trends : India Coffee House -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mohan Marette who wrote (9336)	11/4/1999 5:10:00 PM
From: Mohan Marette	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12475

Ancient Gurukulam in modern times jaininstitution.com Our Bureau (BusinessLine) BANGALORE, Nov. 4 HEARD of the Gurukula system? Our age-old system of education where Gurus and Sishyas live together so that values of the Guru may be imbibed without being imparted? Now, heard of the intranet? A brand new technology that possibly has nothing to do with the Gurukula system? Well, here's an institution that has not only brought the two under the same roof, but is using the intranet to accomplish the goals of the Gurukula system, namely, to keep students in constant touch with the Guru so that they may follow his footsteps. The Web site of Jain International Residential School (www.jaininstitution.com) near Bangalore, claims that the school is committed to re-awakening the Gurukula system. In the same breath, it waxes eloquent about the need to be connected, be it in an educational institution, industry or a Government organisation. Apparently, it is the first such Intranet to be put up in a high school in the country, and is intended to allow authorities to have real-time information on demand. Traditionally, teachers spend countless hours preparing reports on performance of the students for the principal. From the students' viewpoint, it has always been difficult to jump layers of hierarchy if they wanted to change something in the system. Now, the intranet promises to solve such problems. According to information available at the Web site: "The intranet enables the student to communicate his grievances, interests, shortcomings and feedback to individuals who are empowered to respond appropriately. We wish to design a system that elicits hidden, and often inexplicable, feelings and emotional problems to concerned people, so that such problems are immediately looked into for the benefit of the student." Also, since the system allows real-time information on demand to authorities, faculty members are relieved of tedious, clerical work, and can devote more time towards creative and constructive activities. The system was developed by Deldot Systems that is participating at Bangalore IT.com this year, and is soon to be fully functional at the school. So much for educational institutions. Now for some industry activity: Would you like to have your vehicle details on a long-lasting memory card rather than the tattered RC book that you carry around? The Government of Gujarat is investing in providing its RTO customers with laser cards, instead of the good old paper documents. The Rs. 20-crore project envisages providing upwards of 20 RTO offices across the State with optical memory card readers and cards for its clients, namely those applying for driving licences. The information on transactions happening at any of these offices is available real-time to any other RTO across the State. The card, marketed by Shonkh Technologies in India in collaboration with US-based LaserCard Corporation, can hold about 4.1 MB of data and will last you considerably longer than your RC book. The card technology is applicable to banking too. Your passbook will become a thing of the past if your bank commences use of the technology. Interestingly, several levels of security can be built into the card. For instance, with the use of biometrics, it is possible to make the card usable only by one, intended person. For such usage, as in airlines (card used to monitor flier miles), healthcare systems (card stores patient health history) and citizen identification system, the card, that costs about Rs. 250 apiece, can be configured such that data already inscribed on the card is not erasable. More can be appended to exiting data, though. Finally, if 4.1 MB is not something that you can relate to, the capacity is equivalent to about 1,200 pages of information!