In 2009, the DEF received 360 nominations from seven of the eight south asian countries, that inculded Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. In the e-governance category, there were 89 nominations, with about a quarter of the total nomintaitons, this was the highest in any any category. 

Empowering India, was among the 8 projects recognised as winners in the e-governance category, by the Grand Jury of the Manthan Awards for South Asia 2009.

To know more about Empowering India, please click here.

Manthan Awards 2009: Empowering India

Manthan Award, New Delhi 
19 Dec 2009

The award committee noted the following about Empowering India.

A short video prepared by Manthan, describing this initiative can be viewed on YouTube here.

PRODUCT DESCRIPTION
Empowering India is an initiative to empower citizens with information about political candidates, constituencies, MLAs, MPs, and political parties. The information is presented in a simple and comparative manner so that the voter can make an informed choice during the elections. The information on Empowering India web site is freely available to all visitors. There is constituency level basic information about candidates and elections and a set of analytical tools by which more scholarly visitors could do some analysis. There is also a more advanced Build Query feature, which is allows a range of analytical queries to be created as per one's own needs. The website has been in news for all the right reasons by the mainstream media ever since its launch in 2004.

JUROR’S EVALUATION
Empowering India is working towards the goal of making democracy more meaningful by encouraging participation, introducing greater transparency, assessing performance, and facilitating accountability in the political process. Their target is to have information in a manner that would be relevant to every voter in the country in every constituency. With the spread of the Internet and through it the local media, any citizen of the country has the opportunity to make an informed choice. This unique concept has been simply and successfully implemented by the organization.

For more details, please visit Manthan Awards 2009.

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ICT in India – Infrastructure or content driven

Rajen Varada, a member of the Grand Jury of Manthan Award 2009, summarises the award. Mr Varada is a Resource Person, ICTD Community, UN Solution Exchange.

The World Summit awards on e-content are a UN body which documents and acts as a catalyst for e content development across the world. The India chapter called “the Manthan Awards” commenced in 2005 and throws a very interesting light on the content evolution of ICTs in India.

The nominations for content in the year 2005 were just 95 with participation of a few states most of whom were from the southern part of India which are considered the “developed” states. The year 2009 has seen nomination from 24 federal states across the categories of Community Broadcasting,e-Business, e-Culture & Entertainment, e-Education, e-Enterprise & Livelihood, e-Government, e-Health, e-Inclusion, e-Learning, e-Localisation, e-News, e-Science & Environment and m-Content.

The range of content development itself is mind boggling and puts at rest the argument that India will not be an innovative creative content developer. The total nominations for 2009 have been 360. This is an indicator of how much the various players in the ICT space have invested in not only technology but content to enable the effective use of ICTs.

To read the complete article, please visit here.

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Manthan model being replicated in every South Asian country

Following the Manthan Award going regional and becoming Manthan Award South Asia since 2008, the Manthan modus operandi of finding the best of digital content has been adopted by almost all the countries it is applicable in i.e. Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bhutan & Maldives. For more information, please visit Manthan Award.