College students give Kerala's cyber panchayat a tech edge
The 4 million sq ft of built-up space and 170-odd IT and ITES companies in its sprawling campus employing about 25,000 techies make the park and Kazhakoottam panchayat the centerpieces of Kerala's IT sector.
By ET Bureau |
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The status of being home to India's first technology park in the form of Technopark, inaugurated by late prime minister PV Narasimha Rao, should confer on Kazhakoottam panchayat in the outskirts of Kerala's capital city a technological halo.
The 4 million sq ft of built-up space and 170-odd IT and ITES companies in its sprawling campus employing about 25,000 techies make the park and Kazhakoottam panchayat the centerpieces of Kerala's IT sector. A group of college students from a local government college - most of who did not even have personal e-mail ids a couple of years ago - have given the panchayat a whole new tech makeover from the grassroots level, creating digitized maps of the panchayat, using global positioning system (GPS) tools.
At least three other panchayats in Kerala - Muthalamada, Sreekrishnapuram and Karimpuzha, all in Palakkad district - are known to have done digital resource mapping, but the Kazhakootam example stands out for a variety of reasons.
The undergraduate BSc geography students of the Government College, Kariavattom who undertook the digital resource mapping had only an old computer to work on, and the entire project was completed on a shoestring budget of Rs 45,000, before the map was handed over to Kazhakoottam panchayat president Sindhu Sasidharan.
Says D Nandakumar, head of the department of geography at the college, who led the team of students in the mapping exercise: "Resource maps have been done in panchayats before, but those were commissioned works undertaken by private parties. The Kazhakoottam mapping was the first by undergraduate students, and we could do it with open source GIS system instead of proprietary software that could cost in the region of Rs 6 lakh".
The students used the free GIS software, Q-GIS, and produced thematic maps depicting the working population of the panchayat, population distribution, places of worship, educational institutions, and the political map of the panchayat, with support from the University College, and the Indian Institute of Information Technology - Kerala.
Kazhakoottam panchayat president Sindhu Sasidharan is happy to have the total resource mapping of her panchayat, done. "Earlier, we had a traditional map for the 15 wards in the panchayat, but since reconstitution of the panchayat with 19 wards, we were not having any composite map of the panchayat", says she.
The students, who have opted for an add-on course in digital cartography as part of their BSc in geography, collected the census data, linked it to the spatial format and created the thematic maps. Impressed by the resource maps, state education minister MA Baby has offered funding for such ventures. End
The 4 million sq ft of built-up space and 170-odd IT and ITES companies in its sprawling campus employing about 25,000 techies make the park and Kazhakoottam panchayat the centerpieces of Kerala's IT sector. A group of college students from a local government college - most of who did not even have personal e-mail ids a couple of years ago - have given the panchayat a whole new tech makeover from the grassroots level, creating digitized maps of the panchayat, using global positioning system (GPS) tools.
At least three other panchayats in Kerala - Muthalamada, Sreekrishnapuram and Karimpuzha, all in Palakkad district - are known to have done digital resource mapping, but the Kazhakootam example stands out for a variety of reasons.
The undergraduate BSc geography students of the Government College, Kariavattom who undertook the digital resource mapping had only an old computer to work on, and the entire project was completed on a shoestring budget of Rs 45,000, before the map was handed over to Kazhakoottam panchayat president Sindhu Sasidharan.
Says D Nandakumar, head of the department of geography at the college, who led the team of students in the mapping exercise: "Resource maps have been done in panchayats before, but those were commissioned works undertaken by private parties. The Kazhakoottam mapping was the first by undergraduate students, and we could do it with open source GIS system instead of proprietary software that could cost in the region of Rs 6 lakh".
The students used the free GIS software, Q-GIS, and produced thematic maps depicting the working population of the panchayat, population distribution, places of worship, educational institutions, and the political map of the panchayat, with support from the University College, and the Indian Institute of Information Technology - Kerala.
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Kazhakoottam panchayat president Sindhu Sasidharan is happy to have the total resource mapping of her panchayat, done. "Earlier, we had a traditional map for the 15 wards in the panchayat, but since reconstitution of the panchayat with 19 wards, we were not having any composite map of the panchayat", says she.
The students, who have opted for an add-on course in digital cartography as part of their BSc in geography, collected the census data, linked it to the spatial format and created the thematic maps. Impressed by the resource maps, state education minister MA Baby has offered funding for such ventures. End
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