Sugata Mitra awarded

NEW DELHI: This year's Dewang Mehta Award for Innovation in IT, instituted by the Department of IT, has gone to NIIT chief scientist Dr Sugata Mitra. The award has been conferred on Dr Mitra in recognition of the discovery of the pedagogy, science and technology of Minimally Invasive Education.






The Award for Innovation in Information Technology was instituted in 2001 by DIT, Government of India, in memory of the IT evangelist Dewang Mehta, to honor individuals from technology-related sectors for their innovative work with the potential of making an impact on national development or bring fame to the country.





In 1999, in an experiment conducted by Sugata, a computer connected to the Internet was embedded in a slum wall and left for unsupervised use by children. The findings of the experiment suggested that groups of children could learn to use computers and the Internet on their own, irrespective of who or where they were. Dr Mitra and his team subsequently verified this unique discovery in intensive testing through a large-scale experiment, across India and Cambodia.





The chief minister and the current chief secretary of the Delhi government played an active role in promoting the project in its early stages, in a resettlement colony of South Delhi. Thereafter, in 2001, the World Bank, through its affiliate the International Finance Corporation, formed a JV with NIIT in the form of HIWEL to scale the Research Project to over 30 locations across India- from Leh in the North to Kanyakumari in the South, from Sunderbans in the East to Sindhudurg in the West.





Expressing his happiness at receiving the award, Dr Mitra said, 'I am humbled by this prestigious award. Over three million students, who experienced NIIT's pioneering instructional methods, influenced my efforts at devising the innovative 'Hole-in-the-wall' method of learning.'





The past recipients of this prestigious award include Rajesh Hukku of i-Flex and the team led by Vinay Deshpande that developed the Simputer.