A YouTube for rural India puts farmers first

Digital Green helps rural India make videos they actually want to watch, reports Tech in Asia

For most of the world, there is absolutely nothing to do on the internet.
 

While translation services are a good way to communicate with non-English speakers, most online content continues to target a specific group of people. If a man in a rural village in Andhra Pradesh, India watches a Telugu-translated TED talk titled “10 Reasons Waking Up Early Can Gamify Your Life,” none of the advice will be useful.
 

“It’s not up to us to decide what everyone else wants to see,” explains Rikin Gandhi, founder of Digital Green, a YouTube for rural India and parts of Sub-Saharan Africa. “These are the types of questions that those not on the internet need to answer.”

 

Digital Green provides those in rural India with the opportunity to create and star in helpful, relatable videos. The non-governmental organisation works with other NGOs and development initiatives to train those in rural communities to record and share videos about things like agriculture, health practices, livelihood, nutrition, and social issues. Digital Green works across 5,000 villages in India with 600,000 individuals, 85% of whom are women.
 

“It’s interesting to see the types of questions that people ask when they see these videos,” explains founder Rikin Gandhi. “They’re always asking things like ‘What village is this guy from?’ or ‘What is his name? How big is his family?’ People are really interested in establishing a connection with the person that they see on the screen. They’re tired of the disconnect.”
 

There’s good reason for that. India has 22 officially-recognised languages and, according to the People’s Linguistic Survey of India, has at least 780 more that are unrecognised. This means that a person can travel 10 kilometres and find themselves in a place where they cannot speak the local language.

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This is an excerpt from Tech in Asia. You can read the full article here.