Brief Description of Application
Overview
There are close to about 742,490,639 Indians living in about 593,731 inhabited villages in our
country. The villagers, other than the basic needs of food, clothing and shelter should have access to
at least the basic facilities of a developing society in order to achieve the dream of a developed India
by the year 2020. This application “Swashikar” is an attempt to blend modern mobile technology and
interactive media to provide the basic facilities of good accessible health services, education and
exercising right to complaint to the government (m-governane) against wrongdoings to people living
in the villages of India. All that is needed is one mobile phone and the villagers have access to these
three basic services over the air, which are rightly described to be the footholds of growth in the
modern society and in realization of the great Indian dream.
Incidentally, the name “Swashikar” is derived from these three real life application we are focusing
upon through this piece of software as illustrated below:
SWA --- SHI --- KAR
Swasthya
(Health)
Shiksha
(Education)
Adhikaar
(Rights)
Also, the tag-image (welcome image) of Swashikar reflects a village hut with an antenna on top,
which symbolizes that once this application get implemented, the villages will “get connected” to the
rest of the world using the most modern mobile technology available and will be truly on the path to
development.
The following sections describe in full detail each of the modules of the application and their
applications along with screenshots wherever important.
Screenshots of Main Menu
Fig 1 : Welcome screen
Fig 2 : Main Menu
SPEECH SUPPORT
The application has built-in
in speech support for easy navigation through its menus. It uses
the text-2-speech
speech features of Symbian phones to read aloud the menu entries which helps
visually-impaired users.
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“Shiksha” Learning Module
The Shiksha Module serves the purpose of making basic
primary education available to people living in villages,
both for adults as well as children who are deprived of
formal education in schools as common in cities.
The Shiksha module opens up like the screenshot
shown in the adjoining figure. From this menu, the
prospective student user can choose from one of the
existing topics to view the content provided.
Currently, this version of the application contains two
learning modules namely:
1. Basic Mathematics
2. Basic English
In future releases of the software, more modules can be
added and here’s where scalability of the application
comes underlined.
On selecting any of the modules, a list of topics will be
displayed.
The user can then select the topic he/she wishes to
learn.
On clicking the desired topic, the video will start playing
in the default media player on the phone. This again
highlights the scalability of the application. Videos and
hence, new learning modules can be integrated
effortlessly into the application in future releases.
Fig 3 : “Shiksha” Module
Previous learning modules are also made available on
the Swashikar Online website.
The following two screen shots show the topics of one of the Shiksha learning modules and the actual
video being played on a mobile device.
New! - Practice Exercises for all Shiksha modules are also provided.
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“Shiksha” – Screenshots
Fig 4 : Basic Mathematics Module
Press any arrow/select
key to proceed…
Fig 5 : Practice Exercises
Press the key
corresponding to the
answer…
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“Shiksha” – Screenshots (Contd.)
Fig 6 : Video Screenshots - Addition
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“Swasthya”
Empowering Rural Health Services
The “Swasthya” module aims to support the functioning
of rural health services in India and hence, make the
lives of our village-dwellers a bit easier and cheaper.
The module can be used by individuals as well as
hospitals and dispensaries.
Upon selecting this module from the Main Menu of the
application, an interface for customizing an SMS
appears, as shown in Figure 7. The user selects the
service required, fills in the details. The application then
creates and sends the SMS to the Central Health
Kendra. The Swasthya module can be used for the
following purposes:
1. A hospital or a dispensary can request for a
health facility. For example, a hospital may
require 2 litres of B +ve blood group, or it may
urgently need the advice of a pediatrician.
2. Hospitals or dispensaries may send daily
updates about their functioning and requirements
to the Central Heath Kendra. This is an ordered
and organized way of passing on information to a
central authority. Rather than calling up a
personnel and dictating him all the information, or
sending by post/person, Health Kendras in the
villages can send information in small packets
i.e. through short messages (SMS) to the centre.
Fig 7 : “Swasthya” Module
3. Villages very often feel the scarcity of blood
when required immediately for some treatment or
operations. Now that the villagers are aware, through blood donation campaigns, the
importance of donating blood, any villager who wishes to donate blood can use this
application and fill in his blood group and other details (if any). This information can be passed
on to the Health Kendra and hence, the necessary action can be taken. The Kendra can in
turn maintain a record of blood donators which can come handy in case of emergency
requirement.
Hence, a simple medium such as SMS can be turned into a powerful service for the villagers for
sending basic information to central authorities.
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“Adhikaar”
Getting the ‘Rights’ Right
The “Adhikaar” module aims to provide an average
village-dweller seamless access to his right to query and
complain to the government. The module facilitates the
user to query the authorities and inform the government
at a central place in the administration if anything wrong
is happening at the local level in the villages.
Red tapism, bribery, RTI, Passport problems, voter’s
card, ration card related problems can be very well
tackled through this module and at a very cheap rate. It
basically gives the user the power to interact with the
government authorities directly, thus bringing egovernance to a new level.
Take a case where one Jagdish Yadav living in the
Shahganj village is not getting his loan sanctioned
thanks to a corrupt branch manager Mr. Shah of the
local Sahkari Bank. Mr. Yadav can use this application
and lodge a complaint with the local administration.
Name :
Village :
Type :
Person :
Comp :
Jagdish Yadav
SHAHGANJ
RTI (Right To Information)
Mr. Shah, Branch Mgr, Sahkari Bank
Loan for diary farm not sanctioned even
after 2 months of completing formalities.
This message is sent to the government authorities’
main server and stored at a central place for processing
Fig 8 : “Adhikaar” Module
and action. This helps government form a quicker
medium of reaching to a larger number of people and
that too at ground of action. Actions can be taken against government servants who are not doing
their duties properly and will help the common man in getting his/her work done much faster.
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“Swasthya” & “Adhikaar” - Screenshots
Fig 9 : Form for “Swasthya” & “Adhikaar” modules
User fills this form with required
information and the info is
delivered by SMS to relevant
authorities
Fig 10 : Sending SMS….
Press the OK key. If
user data is not saved,
the application prompts
to save it first.
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