 "After his village became 'Wi-Fied', Mohar Singh, 26, left his job at an IT services firm in Gurgaon to run an e-Mitra kiosk near Karenda, a Rajasthan village about 80 km from New Delhi")
On a balmy morning, about 50 pre-teen children in the village of Karenda take off their shoes and gather inside a room with peeling paint. They settle themselves in five rows - girls in two and boys in three - on an unkempt bare cement floor. Fixed on the ceiling are two fans and a light bulb, none of which works.
A hush falls on the chatter and all eyes turn to their teacher - a tall, mustachioed stern-faced man called Veer Singh - as he gets ready to take lessons in science. The blackboard remains blank. Instead, a Wi-Fi-enabled touch-screen placed in the front comes to life with animated characters when Singh taps it with a rod.
Today, the children are here to learn about the distinction between carnivores and herbivores at what has come to be known as the "smart class" in a school - the only one in this Rajasthan village, about 80 km from New Delhi - that lacks electricity.
The Wi-Fi system runs on the sun's energy, which is drawn from the solar panels laid on the school's roof. The set-up is part of a pilot by Vihaan Networks, a telecom equipment company based in Gurgaon.
Ever since the project kicked off in March 2015, the village of a little more than 2,000 people has been getting free Wi-Fi access from state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd - free, because the project is in the "proof of concept" stage.
"We generally run smart classes after the mid-day meal," says Mahima Pandya, the bespectacled principal, who has been trying to seek funding from the state government to improve the school's infrastructure. "Soon after lunch, children tend to lose interest and sneak out of their classrooms. But smart classes keep them hooked."
The school, a single-storey L-shaped structure that consists of six rooms with pale yellow walls and bright blue doors, is a speck in the lush wheat and mustard fields. A narrow trail from the school cuts through the green expanse to a tall tower half a kilometre away - the newest landmark in a village that lacks motorable roads.
Equipped with a white square-shaped radio that receives broadband signals at a speed of 100mbps from a BSNL exchange in nearby Bhiwadi and rectangular antennae that radiate that signal, the 70-foot-high tower is powered by six solar panels. Once fully charged, the red and black batteries beneath the panels ensure that the set-up beams uninterrupted Wi-Fi signal for three days, Vihaan Networks claims.
This is as cost-effective as it can get. "If you were to dig along the same route [from the BSNL exchange in Bhiwadi, about 7 km from Karenda,] to lay down the fibre-optic cable, it would be very difficult, considering the terrain," says Vihaan Networks Chief Strategy Officer Sanjeev Kakkar.
Also attached to the tower are surveillance cameras and a public address system. Through a set of loudspeakers fixed around the mast, announcements about health camps have been made in the village. Two such sites have also been set up in the nearby hamlets of Bahadari and Phalsa.
After his village became ‘Wi-Fied’, Mohar Singh, 26, left his job at an IT services firm in Gurgaon to run an e-Mitra kiosk near Karenda, a Rajasthan village about 80 km from New Delhi
A newly bought Dell desktop sits on a desk inside the sparsely furnished room of Lukman Khan, a 12-year-old with an ever-smiling face. The lone TV in the house wasn't turned on much in the past few months and was, therefore, sold off. "I watched Bahubali on the desktop recently," he chirps.
Khan's grandfather, Abdul Majid, often asks his grandson to look up the internet for news in Mewati, the dominant language of the Mewat region in which Karenda falls.
The village has about 450 registered users, says Parveen Rana, the project manager from Vihaan Networks.
Dressed in a blue check shirt, over a pair of denims and a black blazer that shimmers in the sunlight, the 29-year-old with a receding hairline is as familiar a sight in Karenda as the tower he guards. Posters displaying his name and phone number are stuck to the walls of many grocery stores in the neighbourhood.
As soon as he sets foot in the village around 9 every morning, Rana is flooded with requests from people to "recharge" their Wi-Fi "coupons". He tours the village, carrying a mobile coupon-printing device, handing out tiny sheets of paper on which passwords are printed. "Every day, I dispense about 150 coupons," he says.
Although coupons are in demand, internet usage varies. Most men in Karenda either work on farms or in nearby factories; some paint houses. Women mostly stay at home. While some families can afford up to three Wi-Fi-enabled devices, most people in the village make do with no more than one smartphone.
For some, religion is an undeniable factor in the way they consume entertainment online.
Mohammad Shahid, a 25-year-old who speaks softly, says he uses his smartphone to watch bayaan, or religious sermons, in Urdu by spiritual leader Qari Haneef Multani. The second youngest of six brothers, Shahid says he doesn't watch movies or songs but sometimes watches Alif Laila, a television series based on the stories from One Thousand and One Nights.
"But it's forbidden for the women," he says, pointing to the women in his family, who refuse to be photographed or named. Even as we talk, the women take me aside, past the clothes drying on the washing line, and towards a room. "One of us often stands with her hand stretched out, holding the smartphone so that all of us could watch Alif Laila," says one of them, even as 10 others giggle sheepishly.
For some, the wireless internet is an opportunity to access information related to their study programmes. Kishna Devi, the deputy sarpanch, was studying for exams conducted by the Institute of Banking Personnel Selection when the pilot started. Sitting on a rope cot, next to an Indo Farm tractor parked in her courtyard, the 30-year-old would often take mock tests online on the family's laptop at that time - apart from watching Hollywood movies.
Her house, located on the periphery of the village, is also one of the 10 in Karenda in which routers are installed by Vihaan Networks to enhance the signal.
Some have even found a way to make a quick buck off the high-speed internet. Mohar Singh, 26, who is Kishna Devi's younger brother, left his job at an IT services firm in Gurgaon to run an e-Mitra kiosk. An e-governance initiative by the Rajasthan government, the e-Mitra scheme allows Singh to help villagers with services such as the Aadhaar card and the ration card.
At his outlet, situated in a modest commercial complex about 3 km from Karenda, Singh provides assistance from 9 in the morning till 10 at night - for a fee of Rs 30. "Earlier, with the 2G network, it would take at least 20 seconds for a webpage to open," he says. "Now, it takes only two seconds."
However, Dhani Ram, a farmer who has travelled nearly 40 km from the village of Husaipaur, tells me that he has paid Rs 800 to get Aadhaar cards made for eight members in his family - a sign that Singh's business has been flourishing ever since his village became "Wi-Fied".
