7. Ruggedness
The device has to operate in rural India, a landscape which varies from arid deserts to cold mountains to swampy marshlands with humans living in all these conditions. Thus, the device has to be able to operate perfectly under all these conditions at an acceptable performance level.
8. Standards compliance
There is an age-old practice of skimping on quality when it comes to production in India. Since these products are for the poor people, there is a very good chance of foul-play with the same. But, as Mr Mannar says, “Yes, we are creating a device for India, specifically rural India, but that in no way means that we should create sub-standard non standards compliant devices just for the sake of it. We should look closely at the best standards available and ensure that the designers keep that in mind while designing.”
Conclusion
Thus, the above issue should be considered while a device is being designed for the rural setting. Of course, since in India, the rural areas are also varied depending on location, there might be some extra considerations to be kept in mind which would be mostly local in nature.
This article is based on the talk by Mr Sai Ram Mannar, Director at GreenOcean Research Labs at the Electronics Rocks 2012 conference in Bangalore.
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