Ancestral villages of two India-born Nobel Prize winners to get Wi-Fi

NEW DELHI: Crowning Glory This year, World WiFi Day will mark the debut of digital wireless connections at the ancestral villages of celebrated scientists CV Raman and Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

Come World WiFi Day on June 20, around 1,000 families in the ancestral villages of two Nobel laureates from India -CV Raman and Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar -will get connected digitally. Purasakkudi and Mangudi (also known as Agaramangudi) are barely 20 km from the bustling temple town of Thanjavur in Tamil Nadu.But despite producing two worldrenowned physicists, these villages are practically unheard of.


WiFi solutions provider Microsense has undertaken a project backed by global body Wireless Broadband Alliance. The company will set up hotspots for internet access at various locations in the village that includes the panchayat office and residential localities.

"With this digital initiative everybody in Agaramangudi village farmers, villagers, students -can benefit from the use of computers.With internet, students will be able to gain knowledge and explore education and job opportunities," said Christuraj, headmaster at Agarmangudi Primary School. Mahesh Iyer, a farmer at Agaramangudi, said WiFi connectivity will help farmers like himself learn about new pesticides, explore markets for har vest and new government subsidies and as well as entertainment.

Microsense managing director S Kailasanathan said the fact that these two villages produced such eminent scientists was the main reason to select them for digital connectivity.

There are challenges, which in clude provisioning power, drawing in the last miles from far-off locations and deploying WiFi gear.


Physical security and safety of WiFi equipment -including real time maintenance -is also a challenge which Microsense engineers are getting ready to wade through, said Sujit Singh, CEO, Microsense.

The company said it will also donate two laptop computers to the Mangudi government aided village school and a desktop as a common resource for use by the villagers.

Vivek Mahendran, a senior application engineer at Oracle Corporation in Hyderabad and son of a farmer who grew up in Agaramangudi was a proud man.

"Even though I chose to pursue engineering, I did not know about IITs or international relations as a subject of study. We can expect a self-made programmer, or a hacker or a village etailer from Agaramangudi in a few years."