Fighting Corruption: Wiki way!

Few weeks back when I watched this http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/shaffi_mather_a_new_way_to_fight_corruption.html , I relaized that there is lot we can do in fighting corruption. Just today I was attending a session about data collection tools, one is from Google ODK and another startup from Finland mGeoS.

And I was connecting the dots, How about a corruption reporting service. why not a data collector for mobile where the citizens report corruption, the data collector can record already location, but one can also feed how much bribe they paid and to whom.

At the backend we can collect the snapshot of corruption in realtime who is getting the bribe and where and how much.

Unused human computation in India.

If you do search on your popular engine about number of Indian engg graduates per year, you might not get a very precise estimate but some vague idea that India produces some 600K engg grads per year. This must be growing atleast for some years to come.

There are other interesting things you might find in those results, like 30% of them are computer science graduates or only 25% of them are employable by MNC's (source some McKinsey report). Number of AICTE apporved engg colleges around 2000 (maybe less than that), which means per college a batch is around 300 students. (which kind of verifies the big figure)

If I start running the numbers on the part I am interested in is the B-Tech project. I seriously think as a B-Tech graduate from India, that BTP (B-Tech Project) was 6 months of time to do some hands on, which with some proper mentoring could have done wonders. So, if I try to guesstimate the Indian BTP human computation worth. It must be straight forward :

Worth = BTP Project Time * Number of Engg Grads * Per month salary which one can give to them
           = 6 (months) * 600,000 * 200 $ (say it 200 $, which is below than what they might get in industry)
          ~ 720 Million USD (did you start biting your nails already). But maybe that is the ideal case, but it gives an idea of the scale.

Recently on my Indian trip, I gave a small motivational talk in my B-Tech college department about  doing interesting projects, which can be shaped as Startups. I started a google group to engage people in conversation but not very sure how far we can take it. We only have a handful of students on it as of now.

I also went to my other friends (who are a bit active in industry both in North and South) asking them the same question that, why startups/MNC's are not engaging with university students in the way it happens in west.(atleast it happens in Finland, which might pass on as a representative of west for this claim) I could not get a satisfactory answer. But, it seems there were two main points

1. We (industry and students) do not have the right mindset in India.
2. Our students are lacking a process/platform to engage with industry.

A very helpful person whom I met in Bangalore, Akash Mahajan helped me to connect with Rahul Jha (a DCE grad) who is also trying to do some initiative in trying to tap this opportunity. Their initiative is known as Step2 (for which they also have a website). I managed to have a chat with Rahul and it seems that our ideas have synergy.

Now my head is boiling with a platform concept which can tap into this opportunity and help connect the two parties. Industry and Students, and as a side effect can give India more tech startups and over all quality improvement for Engg students.

Please contact me if you think you have some suggestions/criticism for the same. Or leave comment on the blogpost.