Indian state reaches poor via mobile phone

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The state of Rajasthan in northern India has launched an e-governance initiative that aims to communicate essential information to the underprivileged via mobile phones. The system incorporates data migration, text-to-speech conversion in local languages, automatic dialing, and voice message transmission.  

Shankar Aggarwal, Joint Secretary – DIT, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, India, told FutureGov: “Voice calls do away with the problem of illiteracy. The e-SANCHAR project integrates mobile/telephony with ICT to generate automated voice calls to disseminate timely information to citizens.”

The public will be informed of the release and sanction of pensions, PDS information, alerts, campaigns, advisories, and other information of broad public interest, he said. In this way, the government can reach out to rural pensioners, the aged, the disabled and the less privileged. It is an example of the many partnerships involving citizens, the government, and the telecom industry, Aggarwal added.

The project is the brainchild of Tanmay Kumar, Secretary, Information Technology & Communication, Government of Rajasthan, who originally conceived of it so that the government could provide “increased transparency, accountability and responsiveness in service delivery.”

Named “e-Speech Application through Network for Automated Communication Help and Response”, it is a collaboration between RajCOMP, the state’s computer agency, and OneWorld Foundation-India. The system conveys real time information from government to citizens without an intermediary, and the state is looking to deploy it on an even larger scale; it is currently confined to the set of citizens under beneficiary programmes.

The Rajasthan government is now looking to market the initiative to other state governments in India.

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Mobile Phone Use Disrupts Sleep, Causes Headaches and Confusion

Extended exposure to the radiation of a mobile phone, even when not in use, can cause headaches and disrupt the body's ability to enter deep sleep, according to a study conducted by researchers from Wayne State University in the United States and the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, and published in the peer-reviewed online journal Progress in Electromagnetics Research Symposium.

Researchers conducted an experiment on 36 women and 35 men, of whom 22 and 16, respectively, had previously reported symptoms that they blamed on use of mobile phones. The remaining 33 participants had not reported any symptoms.

All participants were screened carefully by doctors to make sure that they had no underlying medical condition that might interfere with the results. They were all recruited specifically for the current study.

During two different sessions, the participants were exposed either to real or sham radiation for three hours, but were not told which they had been exposed to. The radiation was equivalent to that emitted by a mobile phone, giving an average exposure of 1.4 Watts per kilogram. It included simulations of a phone being both in use and inactive but still turned on. Researchers collected data on the participants before, during and after each exposure.

Upon questioning after the exposure, neither the radiation nor the control group was able to guess which group they were in any more accurately than by chance.

Participants took longer to reach stage 3 sleep when exposed to radiation than when exposed to sham radiation, and stayed in stage 4 sleep for a shorter time. These stages of deep sleep are believed to play an important role in helping the body recover from everyday stresses.

Participants who had not previously reported any symptoms were also more likely to report experiencing headaches while being exposed to real radiation than to sham radiation.

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Mobile Phone Radiation to Unleash Epidemic of Brain Tumors

A new review of more than 100 studies on the safety of mobile phones has concluded that cellular devices are poised to cause an epidemic of brain tumors that will kill more people than smoking or asbestos.

The review was conducted by neurosurgeon Vini Khurana, who has received more than 14 awards in the past 16 years, who made headlines worldwide with his warnings. He called upon the industry to immediately work to reduce people's exposure to the radiation from mobile phones.

According to Khurana, research demonstrates that long-term use of mobile handsets, more than 10 years, can double the risk of contracting brain cancer. While a number of studies have concluded that there is no such risk, Khurana said that most of those studies only examined short-term use. But because a brain tumor can take 10 years to develop, studies without a long follow-up period are largely meaningless.

"There is a significant and increasing body of evidence for a link between mobile phone usage and certain brain tumors," Khurana said, a link that will be "definitively proven" within 10 years.

Khurana urged people to minimize their use of mobile phones, particularly handsets. He also urged the industry to act immediately to reduce exposure to radiation from the devices.

While mobile phones may save lives in certain emergency situations, Khurana said, brain cancer is "a life-ending diagnosis."

"It is anticipated that this danger has far broader public health ramifications than asbestos and smoking," Khurana said. While one billion people worldwide smoke tobacco, three times as many now use mobile phones.

Smoking is responsible for five million deaths each year.

While the United Kingdom's Independent newspaper described Khurana's study as "the most devastating indictment yet published of the health risks" of mobile phones, his warning is not the first. A Swedish study in 2006 concluded that people who used mobile phones for an hour or more each day had a 240 percent higher brain tumor risk than non-users. Tumors were significantly more likely to develop on the side of the head where the phone was most often used.

Inspired in part by such studies, France has warned against mobile phone use (especially in children), Germany urges people to minimize their use of mobile handsets, and the European Environment Agency has called for minimizing exposure to cellular radiation.

The mechanisms by which mobile phones increase cancer risk are not well understood, but several possibilities are suspected. Electromagnetic radiation (EMR) is known to directly heat up the head and brain, and can also cause thermoelectric effects on cells and DNA. According to Khurana, even bluetooth devices and unshielded headsets merely turn the head into an antenna that bombards itself with radiation. Children, with thinner skulls than adults, are particularly at risk.

"EMR rays in general cause irritation, concentration lapses and in many cases even proliferation of cells which cause cancer," said Dr Rajeev Ranjan, a New Delhi neurologist. Radiation can also interfere with the functioning of medical devices like pacemakers.

EMR also "affect[s] the DNA and cause[s] problems in cell recovery and cell growth," said New Delhi neurologist Anshu Rohatgi.

Khurana warned that if immediate measures are not taken, mobile phones will soon be responsible for a massive public health crisis.

"We are currently experiencing a reactively unchecked and dangerous situation," he said.

Because mobile phone use began in the mid-1980s and it can take up to 20 years to diagnose a malignant solid brain tumor, he said, "In the years 2008-2012, we will have reached the appropriate length of follow-up time to begin to definitively observe the impact of this global technology on brain tumor incidence rates."

"Malignant brain tumor incidence and its associated death rate will be observed globally to rise within a decade from now," Khurana said, "by which time it may be far too late to meaningfully intervene

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