Manthan-AIF Award is a first of its kind initiative in India to recognize the best practices in e-Content and Creativity. It www.manthanaward.com was launched on 10th October 2004, by Digital Empowerment Foundation in partnership with World Summit Award and American India Foundation.

The Manthan-AIF Award winners for the year 2004-05 were awarded on 23rd July, 2005 at India International Centre, Lodi Road, New Delhi in a one day Manthan-AIF Award gala cum conference on e-Content and Sustainability organized by Digital Empowerment Foundation. The Conference cum award gala was attended by over 150 people from various walks of life and came from different regions and background and represented various States across the length and breadth of the country.

Emphasizing on the importance of e-Content & Creativity for and by the grassroots people, the Manthan Award 2005 recognized and awarded 27 initiatives out of 104 nominations received for the following 8 categories.

The categories were:

1. e-Business
2. e-Entertainment
3. e-Culture
4. e-Learning
5. e-Health
6. e-Governance
7. e-Science
8. e-Inclusion

The overwhelming response from the participants of Manthan-AIF Award 2005 has also encouraged us to increase the numbers of categories for the Manthan-AIF Award 2006.

Following is the list of categories for Manthan-AIF Award 2006:

1. E-Business: Support and optimization of business processes; creation of new business models in e-commerce and m-commerce, business to business, business to consumers, internet security and other areas; supporting Small and Medium Enterprise’s on the marketplace.
2. E-Culture: Preserving and presenting cultural heritage in line with the challenges of the future; demonstrating valuable cultural assets clearly and informatively using state-of-the- art technology.
3. E-Entertainment: Supplying digitized entertainment products and services; entertaining the user in this world's variety of languages and its cultural diversity; supporting movement from one-way to two-way, from single to multiple players, interactive entertainment and the synergy between analog and digital platforms.
4. E-Science: Fostering global collaboration in key areas of science, and the next generation of infrastructure that will enable it; providing measures to promote and demonstrate scientific processes and make them accessible to citizens; scientific projects articulated through new media.
5. E-Health: Developing the consumer-centered model of health care where stakeholders collaborate, utilizing Information Communication Technology, including internet technologies to manage health issues as well as the health care system.
6. E-Government: Empowering citizens and serving public services clients; fostering quality and efficiency of information exchange and communication services in governmental and public administrative processes; strengthening participation of citizens in information society decision making.
7. E-Learning: Serving the needs of the learners to acquire knowledge and skills for a complex and globalizing world; creating active e-learning communities and target models and solutions for corporate training, supporting first steps in multimedia.
8. E-Inclusion & Livelihood: All measures supporting IT integration of least developed states of India into the Information Society. Reducing the "digital divide" and “content gap” between technology-empowered and technology-excluded communities and groups - such as rural areas and women. Bridging society through multimedia.
9. E-Education: Empowering the education paraphernalia with new technology tools; transforming schools, universities and other educational institutions through interactive, personalized and distributed learning resources; providing infrastructure for the rural based educational institutions, especially schools.
10. E-News: The expansion of traditional media into new media and leveraging the technology as medium to reach larger masses, offering content in local language and in all form of electronic and digital medium.
11. E-Localisation: Interventions of ICT has been instrumental in empowering life at the grassroots level in many ways such as application in local language, vernacular content and digital tools to work in oral medium. Agriculture, eco-tourism, ayurveda, artisans skills, organic food, are all being strengthened by the electronic and digital technologies
12. e-Environment: The spread of all the concerns is of high importance as far as environment is concerned. Especially with emerging globalisation, environment is being affected badly and it requires all kind of technology and medium to spread the right message and messages of devastation it can create. Of course, ICT can play a huge role of responsible dissemination of information about environment. This category is open to all those efforts in the areas of environment where ICT and its components are playing significant role.
    
    Special Categories
     
13. E-Youth: India’s 45percent youth population is getting digital with the speed of thought and adopting newest technologies to empower themselves and to work efficiently. Youth are also involved in offering innovative ideas, application, and initiatives which is empowering the masses.
14. M-Content: Mobile has become the most powerful medium for the exchange of content, services, and building communities. With the high penetration of mobile devices, content and services are becoming essentials in mobile devices. New content applications and innovative content is supplementing into the strength of the mobile devices.

To create an information rich society where everyone, irrespective of caste, religion, race, region, gender etc., are empowered to create, receive, share and utilize information and knowledge for their economic, social, cultural and political upliftment and development.

It is information which is taking us ahead not technology alone. The information society will remain an empty concept if one talks solely about technology, network and access issues. We need not only to consider the general use or impact of the new information and communication technologies (ICTs), but also the cultural messages which they can relate. The Manthan-AIF Award is established to guide India through those best e-Contents from the country which stands out due to their excellence in carrying message and creating knowledge.

India wide selection for the best e-content practices – Manthan-AIF Award 2005 – received more than 100 nominations from 21 states for the eight categories prescribed in context of the World Summit Award, which was formed in 2003 under the framework of United Nation’s World Summit on the Information Society.

Out of 104 nominations 95 nominations were found to be valid and were considered for the Jury evaluation process. E-Governance category received the maximum of 25 percent nominations closely followed by E-Learning with 23 percent nominations. In e-Inclusion category 20 percent products were nominated whereas e-Health and e-Culture received 15 percent and 10 percent nominations respectively. E-business, e-Science and e-Entertainment were among the least nominated categories.

Majority of products were nominated form the private companies and the governments. Private companies nominated 31 percent products whereas the government body nominated 26 percent initiatives for the Manthan-AIF Award. National and International NGOs including the Trust had 21 percent nominations. The Academic institutions had 11 percent nominations for the award and the rest are joint initiatives of government, institutes, community help groups etc.

Manthan-AIF Award selected the JURY of 16 members comprising of eminent experts in various walks of life of academia, government, corporate, civil society and experts.

The goal of the entire Manthan-AIF Award process is simple: making visible the contents that already exist and thus demonstrating the richness and diversity of content creativity to those interested in understanding and planning the Global Information Society.

The Manthan-AIF Award wants to demonstrate to you, the readers – experts and diplomats, civil society activists and policy makers – the existing range of creativity and excellence in the use of the IT tools and communication networks. It might confirm your conviction that access to networks and ICT platforms is beneficial to the high quality and value of e-contents which are produced and available. It might also lead you to consider that quality contents, their production and economic sustainability require changes to the way markets operate and governments act.

The Manthan-AIF Award emphasizes the importance on cultural diversity and identity, the creation of varied information content and digitalization of educational, scientific and cultural heritage.

The Manthan-AIF Award is the first of its kind initiative in India which will open doors for global recognition and support to the local initiatives. Innovation comes from the ground. It is created by people wishing to communicate. In order to extract and recognize excellent content, initiatives should be taken to select and promote creative content developers in all world regions.

E – Content will indeed enable every citizen to have complete information about his/her rights, privileges, strengths, and how he/she can become self reliant on the basis of information prowess.

We would also take it further by encouraging the development of e-content at every level and enhancing the e-content production capabilities and inducing poverty alleviation exercises.

India is a vast country and has ancient history which reflects its cultural, educational and social richness.

FC Kohli
Ex Chairman & CEO, Tata Consultancy Service

Mr. Bibek Debroy
PhD Chambers of Commerce

Dr. Ashok Jhunjhunwala
Professor, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras

Mr. Vinay Sheel Oberoi, IAS
Director, National Mission on Bamboo Application

Mr. Ganesh Natrajan
Dy MD & Chairman, Zensar Technologies

Ms. Aruna Sundararajan, IAS
CEO, Common Service Centers (CSCs), ILFS

Prof. Anil Gupta
IIM Ahmedabad; HoneyBee Network & National Innovation Foundation

Dr. Sugata Mitra
NIIT

* Subject to Confirmation

The Linking of global opportunity to Local Knowledge base
The Manthan-AIF Award is a national initiative following the footsteps of the World Summit Award (WSA) which is an international body formed under the framework of United Nation’s World Summit on Information System (WSIS) 2003-05. Digital Empowerment Foundation has an exclusive tie up with WSA to run similar initiative in India and thus the Manthan-AIF Award.

It covers the length and breadth of the country which has 18 officially recognized languages and numerous other languages and dialects. Lots of initiatives have taken place in remote India, unfortunately those initiatives due to language and information barrier never get their due recognition and die due too lack of recognition and promotion.

In fact the Manthan-AIF Award is the first step towards not only recognizing those initiatives nationally but at the international level as the Manthan-AIF Award winners will automatically get nominations in the World Summit Award 2005 to be held in Tunis.

Once the initiatives at the local level get its due recognition, the replication of those initiatives will start taking place for the rest of the country. This process will indeed help the 70 percent of the population, who live in the remote areas.

Pilot projects in various parts of the country have clearly demonstrated the enormous potential of ICT in reducing the harassment of citizens and corruption.

Organisers & Conceptualiser

• Digital Empowerment Foundation
• World Summit Award

Principal Sponsors & Partners

• American India Foundation
• Uttaranchal Government
• Center for e-Governance, DIT, GoI

Associate Sponsors & Partners

• Hole in the Wall Education Ltd.
• eGovWorld.gov.in
• MetaLearn

Supporters

• Sristi
• Inomy Media Private Limited, India
• Global Alliance for Bridging Digital Divide, Hong Kong
• Center for development of Advance Computing, Government of India
• BytesforAll
• Broadband Society for Universal Access, India
• TFTP
• IRAM

Media & Outreach Partners

• Dataquest
• Brand Reporter
• agencyFAQs!
• IT Vidya

The name and logo of the co-sponsors will feature in all the advertisements, brochures, and press releases and in various media outreach programmes. Since, the Manthan-AIF Award will be the Indian chapter of the World Summit Award; the media partners would get national and international coverage as well. The Manthan-AIF Award ceremony (Manthan-AIF Award gala along with a one day conference) which will be held annually in the month of April every year and it will be a national event where the participants will come from various places in India. The logo of our co-sponsors would feature on the Award trophy and will also have the right to put their banners at the venue of the event.

• Because there is no other effort in India which recognizes the effort of content and services rather than just technology.
• To fill the content gap versus technology gap which has no meaning – technology is as good as it serves the end meet.
• To identify the best practices in e-content and Creativity in India and make it known to the majority, to reap its benefits.
• To encourage the creativity of enhancing the local e-content and develop production capabilities.
• To nominate Indian products to the World Summit Award for International recognition.
• To fast forward the movement of e-content creation so that through digital medium India reached to the world thus attracts global economic opportunities.
• To encourage the local language content creation.

March 1, 2006:
Manthan-AIF Award announced for 2006

March 5, 2006:
Nomination for the Manthan-AIF Award 2006 opens

July 1 – 15, 2006:
Jury evaluation

August 5, 2006: (Saturday)
Declaration of Results, Manthan-AIF Award Gala & International Conference on e-Content & Sustainability

Sachin Pilot, Member of Parliament
A special invitee to Manthan 2005 was Mr. Sachin Pilot, one of the youngest parliamentarians in India. Sitting through the entire actual award ceremony, Mr. Pilot gave an overview of Manthan initiative in e-content practices in the county. Expressing his full appreciation for the inspirational and hard work of the award winners, Mr. Pilot praised them for coming out with noble ideas in e-content for the benefit of commoners. Manthan Award has provided a right platform to those whose noble works will be duly recognized and inspired, he said. “It is a nice experience to see people coming out with ideas and translating them into real products,” Pilot stated.

Idianbolooddonors.com – Winner Manthan Award 2005
Three nominations in each category were chosen as winners for the year 2005 and the first among the winners in the 8 categories were nominated for the World Summit Award – Information Society to be held in Tunis in November 2005. There were Scientists, Policemen, Photographers, entrepreneurs, Script-writers, Government Employees, and House-Wives who vied and won the Awards. Indianblooddonors.com, an initiative started by Khushroo Poacha (Railway employee) and his wife Fermin, is a web-based helpline for patients who need blood all over the country in emergency. This initiative has registered donors in 330 cities and caters 25-30 requests daily.

They have been running the website for the last 5 years through their personal savings. Manthan Award is the first to recognize such novel effort and in the words of Khushroo Poacha, “The Award is a real encouragement and has motivated us to continue with our effort. It has suddenly made us feel important and we think that our effort is definitely contributing to the society.

“The award is the first recognition to us in five years time since the beginning of our work and definitely this will help us a lot in our future endeavours,” said Fermin Poacha.

Prof. Anil Gupta, Padamshree
Professor Anil Gupta, IIM, Ahmedabad was one of the speakers in the Manthan Award conference cum Award gala. He is also the Jury member of the Manthan Award. He appreciated our effort and said, “There are hundreds and thousands of innovations in India and around the world, which are being discovered from time to time. They are solving day-to-day problems with simple solutions thus needs to be popularized and recognized and Manthan Award is one great step towards that.”

Mr. Gupta was of the firm believe that local knowledge and innovations need to be made accessible to people. Hence, contents and their reach are important to better lives of people. Thus more is the need to promote Indian languages. Nevertheless, Gupta felt that illiteracy, localism and language are the barriers at times. Hence, use of iconic languages, symbols, pictures, audio-video instruments, illustrations holds critical in connecting people through content generation and storage.

Sharing knowledge in multilingual, multimedia context has assumed more importance in the era of ICT and digital technology. Gupta pointed out that e-content is missing in local languages in this country, which is quite problematic in sharing local knowledge and innovations. Language is primary and no culture is comprehensible without a sound language base.
S. Siva Kumar, CEO ITC – International Business Division
Another prominent name in the corporate sector, S Siva Kumar, CEO, ITC e-Choupal venture, a successful experiment for rural generation using ICT as means, was also one of the Speakers in the Manthan Award gala cum conference. He complemented the Manthan initiative to recognize e-content in the country and emphasized on the need to connect content with resource and resourcefulness in the country, especially for rural India.

S. Ramakrishnan, Director General, CDAC, Government of India
Speaking on e-content and social development in India, Mr. S Ramakrishnan, Director General, C-DAC, said that the country’s multicultural identity augurs well for the India emerging as a knowledge economy. Mr. Ramakrishnan is the man behind the invention of Ernet and developing the countrywide portal of Development Gateway Foundation India.

A knowledge society has to address many issues and India cannot ignore them either, according to DG, C-DAC. Content is one of the issues. Making e-contents available on local languages is essence of any democracy, including India. ICT as a tool much more opportunity in this regard, asserted Ramakrishnan. The good news, according to him, is tools and fonts are available in this country in Hindi, Tamil and few other languages and within the next six months, this will be available in all major languages, Mr. Ramakrishna disclosed. He stressed the need to build some kind of public-private partnership in content issues sharing business models and other success stories. He appreciated the effort of Manthan Award and forwarded his cooperation which helped us to publish the book titled “India’s Best e-Contents 2005”.

aAQUA – Winner Manthan Award 2005
“An award like this has given us a great feeling and a wonderful experience”, said Anil Bahuman of aAQUA, a multilingual online question and answer forum in Maharashtra. aAQUA bagged the gold in the e-Inclusion category.

ToeHold – Winner Manthan Award 2005
Mrs. Madhura M Chatrapathy of ToeHold, Karnataka, thanked Osama Manzar, Chairman of Manthan 2005 for the great initiative while briefly revealing how her organization ToeHold Artisans Collaborative (TAC), based in Karnataka and its website www.toeholdindia.com aims to take the humble generic Kolhapuri footwear to branded ‘couture’ status in international markets. ToeHold bagged the silver in the e-Business category.

MarathiWorld.com – Winner Manthan Award 2005
“The award is a great recognition of our efforts,” said Vinay Hinge of Marathiworld.com from Maharashtra. Marathiworld.com is a community portal for Marathi community and a cultural abode. It bagged the bronze award in the e-Culture category.

BookBox – Winner Manthan Award 2005
“The award will generate more awareness on e-content practices,” said Brij Kothari of BookBox, Pondicherry. BookBox is a ‘JukeBox” of educating and multilingual “animation-books,” for distribution on electronic and digital media. It bagged the special mention award in the e-Learning category.

Certificate in Good Agriculture Practices (C-GAP) – Winner Manthan Award 2005
“The award is a first recognition for us and our team. We want to dedicate to the farmers of our state,” said Sanjay Borkar from C-GAP, Maharashtra. C-GAP (Certificate in Good Agricultural Practices) is a course targeted towards farmers to educate them on good agricultural practices and quality systems. C-GAP bagged the gold in the e-Learning category. Mr. Borkar was highly appreciative of the initiative of Mr. Osama Manzar and his team in Manthan 2005.

Helpline on HIV/AIDS – Winners of Manthan Award 2005
“I want to give heartfelt thanks for organizing Manthan 2005 and want to congratulate and acknowledge the sincere efforts of the Manthan team. Indeed it is a very well planned opportunity created to recognize e-content practices in the country. It is a great job done,” said Ms Mridula Chandra of Helpline on HIV/AIDS, Rajasthan. Helpline bagged the bronze in the e-Health category.

Neeta Shah, Government of Gujarat
“I want to congratulate the entire team of Manthan Award for this excellent initiative,” said Neeta Shah of SWAGAT, Gujarat. SWAGAT is aimed at resolving long pending grievances of citizens at large in the state. It bagged the special mention award in the e-Government category.

ZMQ Software – Winner of The Manthan Award 2005
“It is a credible show,” commented Subhi Quraishi of ZMQ software systems, Delhi. ZMQ bagged the gold in the e-Entertainment segment for their project on World Cup Cricket.

THE WEEK, AUGUST 7, 2005
ii4d MAGAZINE, AUGUST 2005
THE HINDUSTAN TIMES, MUMBAI, JULY 31, 2005
THE TIMES OF INDIA, MUMBAI, SOME TIME IN AUGUST, 2005

Sponsoring the Manthan-AIF Award will provide you with essential marketing opportunities along with association with the highest achievers and the most reputable organizations within the industry. It will also give you the opportunity to present directly to a diverge range of ICT initiatives, and network with highly educated individuals from each and every state and union territory of India and many of whom hold a name in the field of ICT initiative.

Since, the Manthan-AIF Award will be the Indian chapter of the World Summit Award; the sponsors would get national and international coverage as well. The Manthan-AIF award ceremony will have national and international participants.

As the Manthan-AIF Award sponsor you will receive:

Reach

• The Manthan-AIF Award is an Indian initiative which covers all the States and Union territories. ICT experts from each state have already registered with ourselves and will be nominating the best of the ICT products in as per the defined category from the state they represent.
• All the ICT initiatives in India will be involved, some directly and others indirectly.
• The winners of the Manthan-AIF Award will automatically get nomination for the World Summit Award

• Potentially exclusive sponsor of the Manthan-AIF Award
• Opportunity for a representative of your organization to make a maximum five minute speech at the function
• Acknowledgement in all the Press Releases, Advertisements and Press coverage
• Acknowledgement in all Marketing materials
• Highlighted as co-organizers on the Back Drop banner
• Employees Award Prizes
• Employees as Jury member
• Acknowledgement in Manthan-AIF Award and Digital Empowerment Foundation website
• Acknowledgement at various Road shows organized nationally and internationally
• A complimentary corporate table (seats 10) at the Manthan-AIF Awards Ceremony
• Organization’s name and logo on trophy
• Organization’s name and logo on all certificates i.e. winner, highly commended and participants
• Organization’s logo to appear on all static pages of audio-visual presentation at awards ceremony
• Recognition as a Sponsor on all printed Conference material including the Registration Brochure and Conference Week Program Book
• Organization brochure to be inserted in all delegate satchels (Sponsor to supply materials)
• Complete list of delegates, including address, telephone, email and fax details provided after Conference
• Organization logo displayed on the Manthan-AIF Award website, with a hyperlink to the Sponsor’s own website

• Acknowledgement in Manthan-AIF Award and Digital Empowerment Foundation website
• Acknowledgement at various Road shows organized nationally and internationally
• Recognition as a Sponsor on all printed Conference material including the Registration Brochure and Conference Week Program Book
• Organization brochure to be inserted in all delegate satchels (Sponsor to supply materials)
• Complete list of delegates, including address, telephone, email and fax details provided after Conference
• Organization logo displayed on the Manthan-AIF Award website, with a hyperlink to the Sponsor’s own website
• Acknowledgement in all the Press Releases and Coverage
• Acknowledgement in all Marketing materials
• Employees Award Prizes
• A complimentary corporate table (seats 7) at the Manthan-AIF Awards Ceremony
• Logo on the Back drop banner of the Manthan-AIF Award

• Organization brochure to be inserted in all delegate satchels (Sponsor to supply materials)
• Complete list of delegates, including address, telephone, email and fax details provided after Conference
• Organization logo displayed on the Manthan-AIF Award website, with a hyperlink to the Sponsor’s own website
• Acknowledgement in all the Press Releases and Coverage
• Acknowledgement in all Marketing materials
• Employees Award Prizes
• A complimentary corporate table (seats 4) at the Manthan-AIF Awards Ceremony
• Logo on the Back drop banner of the Manthan-AIF Award

The category sponsors would mean that each category would be declared after their name. Such as “The OUTLOOK e-News Manthan-AIF Award goes to XXXXXXXXX”. At the same time, the category sponsors would also be part of the list of overall sponsors with the category mentioned over their name.

There will be only one sponsor for each category, but one entity can sponsor many categories if they wish. As a matter of fact, each category has three awards [Gold, Silver & Bronze] besides 2-3 “Special Mentions”.

• Written and Spoken acknowledgement in sponsored category of the contest
• Logo on the Trophy as category sponsors
• Organization brochure to be inserted in all delegate satches (Sponsor to supply materials)
• Complete list of delegates, including address, telephone, email and fax details provided after Conference
• Organization logo displayed on the Manthan-AIF Award website, with a hyperlink to the Sponsor’s own website
• Acknowledgement in all the Press Releases and coverage
• Acknowledgement in all marketing materials
• A complimentary corporate table (seats 4) at the Manthan-AIF Awards Ceremony
•  Logo on the Back drop banner of the Manthan-AIF Award

• The entire day will be dedicated to one-day conference and deliberation on e-Content & Empowerment, which will have one hour each dedicated to each of the category of the awards for discussing, for example, how e-health is important and how to develop e-content in the health category for empowering citizens with medical and related information using ICT tools. The sessions will be parallel as there are about 12 categories that will be discussed. Each category will have the panels of the awardees in that category and experts of the particular category.
• The conference will be followed by declaring the “agenda for e-content development for the nation” which will be sent to the minister of Information Technology and the office of the Prime Minister.
• The day will be ended in the evening with a gala for the awardees followed by dinner.
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