When Venkatraman Balaji received the prestigious World Technology Award in 2001, he shared the stage with a few other highly-accomplished individuals: Craig Venter, who was selected for his work sequencing the human genome, and Intel cofounder Gordon Moore. The first Indian to win such an award, Balaji was recognized for his contribution to a project that is responsible for bringing the benefits of IT to fishing villages in India.

This unassuming man credits the project’s success to teamwork. “We took up a simple challenge,” he was reported as saying after the award presentation in London. “We wanted to see if IT could be meaningful to the lowest 20 percent of the people of India and not just for professionals.”

The project was simple yet effective. Using adapted radiophones, Balaji’s team linked fishing villages to a hub, which in turn was linked to the Internet. This enabled the villagers to download information about the height of waves in the region from data supplied by the US Navy. As a result, the fishermen now know when the area will be hit by dangerously high waves – information that saves lives and livelihoods.

When Balaji left the M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation in India, where he had worked to establish these “information villages,” as he calls them, he looked forward to continuing the same sort of work in the CGIAR.

“When I joined ICRISAT at the end of 2000 as Head of the Information Systems Unit, I proposed a variation of the “information villages” approach that could be applied to a much bigger problem like drought,” he says.

As a result of his proposal, the Virtual Academy for Semi-Arid Tropics (VASAT) project came into being and Balaji was established as its coordinator.

The VASAT project empowers vulnerable rural communities in the semi-arid tropics so they can cope with recurrent droughts. The advantages of contemporary ICT and knowledge management are blended with non-formal, open learning to deliver vital information to people living in such drought-prone areas.

Balaji finds the project work both gratifying and challenging. As he explains, “In the CGIAR, several layers usually separate the poor and the very-well-off. However, many national governments are now becoming more liberal with the CGIAR, making it easier for us to cut through those layers and reach the people who need help the most.”

As if the responsibilities of his work at ICRISAT and the demands of the VASAT project were not enough, Balaji also stepped forward to lead another ICT-KM project.

“I volunteered for the Desktop Video Conferencing (DVC) project because I believe that synchronous interactions are an integral part of effective collaborative work. Email is a good tool, but it’s not enough. The challenge is to enable the individual scientists, and not just the executives, to use video conferencing as an effective tool.”

As the project nears completion, the effectiveness and value of desktop video conferencing as a means of supporting and enhancing collaboration among various partner groups has been assessed, with positive responses from the different parties involved. In addition, the seven CGIAR Centers that participated in the project have been provided with desktop video conferencing equipment and the necessary software and technical guidelines.

“I enjoyed being involved in this project and interacting with the community members from the E-publishing and CSI projects,” says Balaji. “I have received much by way of valuable advice from Anthony Collins (IT Manager, CIP), David Balson (ICT-KM Program Consultant), Dario Valori (IT Manager, IPGRI), and also the peer reviewers.”

When Balaji is not working, you will find him on the ICRISAT campus in Patancheru, India, where he lives with his wife, Jayashree, a scientist in ICRISAT’s Bioinformatics Group, and his eleven-year-old daughter, Sharada.

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More members of the VASAT Team coming soon...