The mountain-top village deep contained in the Chennampatti forest reserve in Erode district has no roads, electrical energy is a uncommon sight, and donkeys are nonetheless the chief technique of transport. Treatment on the healthcare centre almost 40 km away was merely a luxurious.

Things modified 9 months in the past when District Collector H Krishnanunni and his staff considered a plan. The district administration launched Punnagai (Tamil for smile), an formidable plan that sought to make use of high-speed, 5GHz WiFi web to hyperlink Kathirimalai with the surface world.

With a physician only a click on away on the pc display screen on the native faculty, the place the power has been arrange, now it’s all smiles for Kathimaralai and its 156 residents. “There is a conversation (with doctors), and based on the symptoms we narrate, they recommend medicines, which are made available by the local officers or we get them when we go to the town,” stated one resident, Chinnagiriyan.

“A doctor’s touch may be the only thing missing,” he laughs.

Krishnanunni stated the WiFi venture is an instance of “how the world changes when the internet is made accessible to a village detached from civilisation”.

The District Collector is among the many 19 winners of The Indian Express Excellence in Governance Awards for 2020 and 2021. The biennial awards have a good time the best work carried out by District Magistrates, ladies and men thought of the foot-soldiers of governance as they script change that touches the lives of numerous individuals throughout the nation.

The first impediment in launching the telemedicine venture was constructing a communication community in an space that had no telephones or roads. That’s when Krishnanunni and staff jumped on the concept of WiFi.

Soon, a staff from the Centre for Social Computing (C4S) reached Kathirimalai and commenced putting in a tower, and the required {hardware}, with assist from the District Rural Development Agency (DRDA) together with NABARD. The technical help for the web got here from Anthiyur city, the closest metropolitan roughly 40 km from the forest.

“The facility is accessed by the end-user with only one click… It allows people to connect with the doctors or mentors on the screen,” stated Roshy Ok Falgunan of C4S, who performed a key position in organising the 100 Mbps, long-distance wi-fi facility.

The efforts are bearing fruit. Falgunan stated the doctor-patient telemedicine experiment additionally helped the authorities hint those that wanted pressing medical consideration. For occasion, she stated, the administration is already at work after a latest research discovered “20% of the population” suffered from malnutrition and vitamin deficiencies.

The Indian Express Excellence in Governance Awards 2023

But it’s not solely healthcare although that has improved after the web venture was launched. According to Roja, a village assistant officer, round 434 college students from Kathirimalai and close by villages have additionally been utilizing the WiFi facility, leading to “better reading and writing abilities”. “If the students’ reading and writing abilities were below 20 last year, they are now above 60,” she stated.

With the ‘Kathirimalai healthcare project’ a hit, the Erode district administration is increasing the venture to comparable distant areas within the Western Ghats area.

Although some are cautious concerning the venture’s sustainability, most individuals within the village stated they discover hope in Krishnanunni’s “special interest” within the WiFi venture, and his frequent inspections to the slopes of Kathirimalai.