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Techies quit job to help country
Tuesday, 26 January 2010, 00:37 IST |
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Hubli: Ramakrishnan Selvaraj and R Sumeendranath have quit jobs, where they were earning in lakhs, to invent something that can help the country. They have built a Mobile EPIC device, a technology that could revolutionize the way elections are held in India.
A pilot project taken up in Shimoga, using this technology, has been able to register 17,000 of the 'hard-to-get' voters in just three weeks. This is six-time improvement over the traditional method, which yielded 7,000 cards during a 100-day special drive in June 2009, reports Rishikesh Bahadur Desai of Times of India.
Both the techies were working in Texas Instruments, Bangalore. "After some time, we felt we were not happy. The money was good but we were not sure where our lives were going," Selvaraj said. Sumeendranath added: "That is when we decided to do something that made a difference to the people and also helped us find meaning in life."
Sumeendranath studied in National Institute of Technology (Calicut) and Selvaraj is a product of IIT-Mumbai. A common friend introduced them to R Manoj, special officer at the office of the Chief Electoral Officer. "Manoj gave us the idea of building a smart EPIC maker. In a sense, we built a system that could implement his ideas," Sumeendranath said. The duo studied the election system and realized that it could be bettered if the enrollment of voters was accurate.
The duo together formed a startup, Wizard Technologies and built the first prototype of the Mobile EPIC Device (MED), which works like a hand-held personal digital assistant (PDA). They realized that it is difficult to have the perfect electoral roll in urban areas as EPIC coverage is low. This leads to issues like missing names. Low coverage is due to the reluctance of urbanites. Most are working couples and they don't have time to go to the EPIC centre. Secondly, they have alternative ways of acquiring an identity - like driving licence, PAN cards or workplace ID cards. Thirdly, unlike a ration card, possessing an EPIC does not give any incentives. The device avoids mismatch between details on the electoral roll and the voters' picture. The second generation of this device will allow people to sign on the screen or store their fingerprints, or print the details on the spot, according to Times of India.
Mobile EPIC device has in-built camera and a touch screen, apart from a processor that can manage data. It not only captures images, but also notes GPS coordinates of the voter's house. The device is password protected to avoid misuse.