First Experiments with WiFi in India

Today is World WiFi Day. So I thought I will write down my experience with WiFi, not about my research but how I learnt about the condition of rural India.

Pravin Bhagwat had joined the faculty of CSE Department at IIT Kanpur in 2001. He was a world renowned expert in WiFi, having worked on Wireless LAN communication technologies for some years even before WiFi was standardized. Government of India had set up an organization called Media Lab Asia in collaboration with Media Lab, MIT, USA. And they were very excited about this wireless technology (which at that time was banned in India, but there were talks of opening it up). Pravin suggested that we set up the World's longest multi-hop WiFi network from IIT Kanpur to Lucknow, primarily as a technology demonstration initially, and later, we may tweak the protocol to improve the efficiency of multi-hop access (which was later taken up by Prof. Bhaskaran Raman). I resisted. I had read a paper which essentially said that WiFi performance in multi-hop network would be extremely poor. But he too had read that paper, he knew the authors, and he was convinced that the simulation software they had used didn't implement the protocol correctly. Still, having grown up in a resource-starved environment, this was too much of a risk. I suggested that we go for making IITK as the first WiFi enabled campus in the country (whenever WiFi is legalized), and use multi-hop links as part of campus network. But he was insistent, and I am glad that he was. Pravin has always been a big vision guy.

We finally did set up that network. But this blog is not about the technical challenges, but experiences gained. One of our towers was in Village Sarauhan in District Unnao. The village was about 15 KM from Kanpur-Lucknow highway, and once you went there, the time stood still. So near a major national highway, but still there was no connectivity. While mobile communication was in its infancy all over the country, there was no PCO (the ubiquitous Public Call Office in those days, from where you could make phone calls to anywhere in the world at price fixed by BSNL) either. If a poor man had to make a phone call to his son working in Mumbai, he had to walk about an hour to get to the nearest PCO, stand in a long queue, make a phone call to Mumbai to just tell the other guy that he will call again in half an hour and let his son be available on the phone in Mumbai. After that, he will stand in the queue again, and in about half an hour, make that second phone call. Due to a lot of crowd, the operator would restrict all calls to 3 minutes, and also charge much more than the BSNL price. And one hour walk back. So a 3-minute phone call had costed him not just inflated charges of two phone calls, but also his half day's wages. This was the situation in a village which was well connected by road, and not too far from a national highway in a somewhat urbanized district. Farming land was aplenty and productive and the village wasn't among the poorest for sure. And yet, the phone technology hadn't reached there. After we set up our system and provided WiFi access to the village, we also setup a VoIP call from there to IITK, and enabled its connection to the telephone network through IITK's exchange. So whenever anyone from our team would be in the village, we will let them make a few phone calls. Our project ended up paying a few rupees for each phone call, but they saved more than hundred rupees on each call. We were heroes in that village. Of course, after some time, the phone technology did reach there. This really opened our eyes to the possibilities, and not just our group but other groups in Media Lab Asia. Our assumption that some basic technology is available everywhere and our products and services have to be built on top of that was so completely wrong.

The second interesting experience was in setting up an Internet access shop in a village close to IITK, named Mandhana. We had a PC and a printer there, with WiFi providing connectivity to IITK network and onward to Internet. We would provide Internet access to villagers at very cheap rates, and yet no one would want to access it. They would want to do some activities and wanted to know the cost for them. For example, the day any exam result was being declared, they would not mind paying 3 rupees for downloading their result and taking a print out, which would be a 1-2 minute activity, but if we were to charge 10 rupees per hour in which they could check the result of the whole village, that was unacceptable. So we couldn't sell Internet access as a service even at a very low price, but we could sell "get your score" service, or "book a train ticket" service, or "get a government form" service even at a significantly higher per minute price, if it came with the guarantee that if the service didn't get completed, they won't have to pay. And in our market surveys, it turned out that the price we could charge was roughly equal to the transportation cost they would have to incur to get that service in person. So we could have charged much more and they would have still preferred to come to our shop than take a tempo to the city. This was another great learning. The service that you sell has to be the service that your customer understands and not what you can sell easily. And the price that you can charge has to be linked with the value that he gets out of that service, and not necessarily linked to the cost of providing that service.

While I am at it, may be I should also add the story of the tiny part I played in making WiFi legal in India. There was a conference in Delhi, and on the sidelines, Media Lab Asia organized a demo of its projects being done by various IITs. The Minister of Communication and Information Technology, (Late) Mr. Pramod Mahajan, was supposed to see all the demos. We had all reached a day earlier and put up everything and waiting for him the next day. He did enter the room, only to apologize that he was very busy, had some other pressing engagement and won't be able to see the demos. I was among the first one in the room. I went to him, told him that all of us have been away from our office for 2-3 days to show this demo, and he should find at least 30 minutes to quickly go over the demos. Everyone was shocked that even after a minister has been so kind to be apologetic, here is a professor who is insisting that he sees the demo. Apparently that meant I had no respect for Minister's time. But he was a perfect gent (otherwise, he would not have even come to the room to apologize), and agreed to spend 30 minutes.

My demo was simple (and in today's technology, laughable). There were two imported laptops with WiFi (laptops sold in India were not allowed to have WiFi) and I could transfer a file from one to the other. If he had time, I had planned to show our plans for this large WiFi network. But this file transfer was enough in the situation. He seemed impressed and mentioned that a wireless technology would be very useful in many applications. I told him that for this demo, the police could put me behind bars, as the use of WiFi was illegal. I also told him that only India and Pakistan have not made this band freely available for public use. (I am sure North Korea also didn't allow that, but hey Pakistan works better in any such argument.) IIT Kanpur received temporary permission to use WiFi for our Media Lab Asia projects within days, and the use of ISM band (in which WiFi operates) without license for anyone in India happened a few months later. This was anyway under consideration, but this incident added to the pressure to do it.

Happy WiFi Day to all.

Surabhi Graduates from Ashoka University

On 31st May, at 01:36 AM, Surabhi received an email from Ashoka University. In the attachment was her degree proclaiming her completion of Bachelors of Arts (Honors) in History, signed by the Chancellor Rudrangshu Mukherjee and Vice Chancellor, Malabika Sarkar.

She woke me up and I was lost down the memory lane.

Long time ago, when she was in primary school, I had made a deal with Surabhi. Whenever we will visit Delhi together, I will take her to one of the historical monuments for a visit. That was her condition to visit her grand-parents, and I had gladly accepted it. While at home, she would barely go out to play or do any physical activity, but I remember the day she went to Red Fort for the first time. She walked for hours, wanted to see every little stuff, asking many questions. No complaints about tiring, not even worrying about food.

When she came to class 6th, I thought I will introduce her to online learning, to encourage her to learn new things on her own. Initially, I would sit with her to watch the videos on Khan Academy. What she enjoyed the most were videos on French Revolution.

She must have been in the 8th class when one day I received a phone call from my friend, Sudhir Jain, Director of IIT Gandhinagar that the next day a team from the IIT was going to visit Dholavira, one of the largest Harappan site. What was interesting was that the team included Dr. R S Bisht, the famous archaeologist, and the Director of excavations at Dholavira starting 1989. He himself would be explaining the site to the people. The team also included Prof. Michel Danino, the famous indologist, whom we had heard about a lot. It was certainly exciting for even someone like me, with no formal training in history or archaeology. But we only had a few hours to reach Gandhinagar from Kanpur. So, I declined to join citing the impracticality of this. When Surabhi returned from school, I casually told her about the trip, and she was like, we just need to go at any cost. Within half an hour, she had changed, had food, and packed for a 3-day trip, and I had booked a taxi to Lucknow Airport, some very expensive last minute tickets from Lucknow to Delhi and Delhi to Ahemdabad. We managed to reach there late night, and left for Dholavira in the early morning. We had a great time listening to Dr. Bisht and Prof. Danino about Harappan civilization, and importance of Dholavira and so on.

Next year, Prof. Michel was visiting IIT Kanpur for a semester, and he was giving a series of lectures on the history and heritage of India. The only person who attended each and every lecture was this little school going girl, and she would always sit in the front row and sometimes even ask questions.

It was no surprise then that in 10th class, she told us that she will be studying history and other social science subjects in 11th and 12th classes. The problem was to find good schools where she could follow her passion. We went to a few schools in Kanpur exploring options. Everywhere, the first question would be whether she is an academically poor child and expecting very poor marks in 10th class. That usually would be the last question, since we weren't interested in her studying in a school where those studying social science subjects were assumed to be academically deficient students. So, we moved to Delhi.

As soon as we settled in Delhi, we had to go for certain pilgrimages - National Museum, Old Fort and Red Fort, Qutab Minar, and some lesser known places. Her 12th class history project was about Harappa Civilization. She made us take her to Lothal in Gujarat during that time. And her school project was no less than a thesis.

In between, when she had completed 11th class, Ashoka University had a one week Young Scholar Program for school students, and we sent Surabhi for that. After that program, she was completely convinced that this is where she wanted to study. She had a brochure of Ashoka with her, and throughout 12th class, whenever she will lack motivation to study, she will take out that brochure and tell herself that she needed to study harder because she wanted to be in Ashoka.

She did unexpectedly well in 12th class, including getting a perfect 100 marks out of 100 in history. She applied for admission to all the top liberal arts programs of the country, and thankfully, received admission offers from all of them, except Ashoka, because we had applied there very late. Her marks would have enabled her to get admission in any Delhi University college she wanted. We went on a national tour visiting these institutions, and were very impressed with most of them. We were totally confused, but on 2nd June, 2017, she received an email from Ashoka University, offering her admission. That settled the issue. We had already heard from a few history experts that Ashoka had the best history department in the country, at least among the institutions offering under-graduate program.

I thought she was now on her own and I didn't have to take her to historical places any more. How wrong I was. Her canvas had just become larger. Now, she would no longer demand that I show her places in Delhi. It had to be a different city whenever there were vacations in Ashoka. Not only did I see historical places in Kanpur which I hadn't seen in my decades of staying there, but I had accompanied her to Lucknow, Jhansi, Gwalior, Agra, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, and a few more.

The Ashoka years have been great. I have not heard many college students saying that they enjoy academics in their college. But Ashoka was different. Besides academics, the number of clubs and other extra-curricular activities were amazing. She herself organized a couple of history trips and university organized a few more. The quality of teaching and learning was such that at the beginning of every semester, she would be crying about having to forego so many good courses. She could only do 4-5 courses in a semester while she wanted to be doing 10 or even more courses. I am not sure such enthusiasm for learning is there in many institutions.

As a parent, I thank all the faculty members of Ashoka University. Also, I thank all the founders of Ashoka who had the vision of creating such a fine liberal arts university in India. Because of Ashoka, she has grown into a sensitive and confident young lady who has a keen understanding and appreciation for our history and heritage. And blessed is she for she could study what she was passionate about and not having to follow the herd, and Ashoka was an enabler for that.

Coming back to June, 2020, she was sad about one thing. Her convocation had been postponed indefinitely. She didn't know if it would ever happen. So we decided to create a little convocation experience at home. Got a convocation gown for her and for myself, printed the Ashoka degree, had a backdrop printed which is similar to what they would have in the real convocation at Ashoka. I even gave a small speech to her. We even had a Chief Guest for this "convocation." Prof. Sudhir Jain, Director, IIT Gandhinagar, agreed to give a speech on video conferencing. We had lots of pictures in all parts of the house, and thankfully, the food delivery has been allowed. So we could order a few things to eat and enjoy. Of course, we are still hoping that there will be a real convocation some time in the future.

Handing over the degree to Surabhi

With the family

With parents

With Dad

With Dadi

With Nani

Prof. Sudhir Jain, Chief Guest, on Video Conferencing

In the lawns