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The Net Radiography guru
By M. Khalid Rahman
Do you know who wrote the new software for Stephen Hawking when the genius of the century needed to upgrade his miracle chair without which he cannot communicate with the world around him because of his severe disability?
Dr Arun Mehta got the assignment through a friend in Bombay, and it took him about two years to finish the task with the help of his colleagues. Dr Mehta is well known to the readers of Spider and Dawn where his articles appear from time to time. He is one of the foremost proponents of wireless freedom, and its access to the masses. Radiophony
The methodology and approach is focussed on audio-centric and wireless solutions that would eventually seamlessly converge.
They have developed eLocutor, a multi-forum, multi-functional, easy-to-instal-and-use software for MS Windows for people with severe physical disabilities. Another solution is TeLocutor, a set of village-level FM station solutions ranging from the extremely inexpensive to affordably sophisticated. TransLocutor are wireless-based solutions for simultaneous translation systems for conferences and seminars.
A checquered career
After doing his graduation as an electrical engineer from IIT Delhi, Arun Mehta did his masters in Computer Science from the State University of New York and then his doctorate in Applied Control Theory from Ruhr University Bochum, Germany. He wrote his PhD thesis in the German language. He started his career with teaching Pascal to undergraduates at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, USA. Then he joined Siemens AG, Germany as project engineer, designing and testing automation equipment for steel rolling mills. Then, as a project engineer, Siemens India Ltd, he designed automation systems for industrial use.
As a fellow of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, Germany, he also taught undergraduates and worked on a doctorate.
He also worked as managing director for Indata Private Ltd, a company specializing in training, consultancy and software for education, factory automation, online MIS systems and the internet.
All along, Arun Mehta has remained a human rights activist at heart. He remained president of the Indian Section of Amnesty International for a couple of years and as such indulged in various activities.
He also served as honorary director in charge of the IT programme during the startup phase of the Vivekananda Institute of Professional Studies, where he was responsible for the design of the curriculum, selection of faculty and some teaching as well.
He also made his mark in film-making and TV production. He is currently a director in Kaleidoscope that produced Bandit Queen, Fire and Rajdhani. He is also the president of the Society for Telecommunications Empowerment (STEM) “which seeks to bring the benefits of modern telecommunications to the poor.”
An activist
In 1994, Arun founded FREE, (Forum for Rights to Electronic Expression), the first attempt in India to run a virtual membership organization as a discussion forum on Fidonet, the countrywide network of electronic bulletin boards around the country.
As also active as the president of the Society for Telecommunications Empowerment, seeking to “bring the benefits of modern telecommunications to the poor through technology showcasing, training and policy interventions.”
He believes that “of all the software he has written, pride of place must go to GO! which involved the design and implementation of a programming language that significantly simplifies the hooking up of a PC to any intelligent machine, and the automation of associated tasks, including interface management, data filtering, dynamic graphic displays, alarm annunciation, trend curves, archiving and virtual control desk design.”
In 1999, he conceptualized and conducted a workshop at Dhaka inviting internet experts from Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan on “The Internet in South Asia: Opportunities and Realities.” He also co-authored a book titled Technology and Competitiveness: The case of Brazilian and Indian Machine Tools. It was published in 1993.
The epitome of simple living and high thinking, Arun lives with his wife Aasha, an economist working for the Indian Insitute of Public Administration, amidst heaps of books, magazines and papers, in a small flat in Lajpat Nagar. He operates from his one-room office in his flat although he travels worldwide.
Arun’s family migrated from Lyallpur (now Faisalabad) to India in the wake of Partition, and he speaks fluent Urdu (to me; Hindi to Indians) with a tinge of Punjabi.
Over a cup of tea, when I asked Arun how he came about writing software for Stephen Hawking, he replied, “When Stephen Hawking last came to India two years ago; we were surprised that he was talking to various software companies, looking for somebody to write his basic software. His problem was that the software that he has been using ran on outdated hardware and hence, at some point, he would not be able to operate it anymore. Nobody made that hardware anymore. They had even lost the source codes, and it needed a back up.
“My partner in Mumbai took up that assignment and we delivered that software in February this year to his office. We were already working on developing software for the training of the disabled.
“In IT, the objective should be to develop products that would improve the lives of the disables. The idea is that if you are trying to improve our own life, or that of a friend’s, your motivation in education would be higher and the product of the education would come out to be good, too.”
Arun believes, “IT is a very good profession for a disabled person who, when trained, can earn international salaries without necessarily having to travel that much.”
He feels, “In both India and Pakistan, our entire system of education needs a lot of revamping. It is not suited for the needs of the industry. We do not find qualified people, and we have to train them much from scratch. This is a big burden for a small company like mine to train people in such basic things. That is why we think that training has to get a lot more attention in this country in any case.
“In India, we have built up a reputation worldwide, for being able to provide good quality IT. The marketing effort has been done. We just have to be able to deliver it. So when people from abroad come with expectation, they want to see trained IT people. We should be able to be in a position to keep our people updated. Otherwise, we will hurt all the reputation that we have built up. The problem is not just the demand for Indian IT persons today. The problem is much more the supply.”
He feels, “On one hand, we have this opportunity. On the other, we have set our millennium goals. For instance, ‘by year 2015, every child will be in school.’ But we do not have any advocacy for the disabled. How, then, are we going to train and use the talent of the disabled of this country? They are as many as about five per cent of the population. Considering the population of India, this is a hefty figure. We have to think how are they going to get education? How will they find a job?”
Arun says, “For the disabled, IT is a good area. They can learn IT relatively quickly. I mean, if you have to learn engineering, you have to study a whole lot of mathematics and science and so on before you can go for an engineering college. That is not the so easy. But writing software is so easy. Kids of ten and twelve can be brilliant programmers. Most area of the media, audio-visual production and software are good for a disabled.”
About his areas of focus, Arun Mehta says, “Currently, we want to collaborate with an organization that can take us to the disabled in order to start a training institute.
“The other area that is a focus for us is to see how we can address the information needs of our poor people today.”
At this point I remind him of ‘Simputer’ — dubbed the “poor man’s computer” that was much publicized a couple of years or so ago. Arun tells me that the product didn’t take off. He says, “Now, it has been so many years. At the time it started out, it was a good idea. However, so many new and interesting gadgets have come up now. The good thing about the Simputer is that if you have an application where you need access to hardware designer as well, that is, the modification in hardware deigning, there is an advantage with the Simputer. You can talk to the whole team and they are very open to the ideas and so on. But basically the platform of choice is still the PC compatibles. The product of choice today is the mobile phone. These days, mobile phones run Java and all. I got a phone that has Java built in. You can write software for this machine. This is powerful enough. Phones are getting faster and faster all the time. This is an interesting platform for software development. It is multi-purpose. It has very good connectivity. This is a much more important platform, I would say.”
Arun first met Hawking at Cambridge, UK, where he visited the genius in the office in his house. “That was my first opportunity to meet the guy. Later, when we wrote the first version of the software, we went and got feedback from him. He is the only person in the world who is still using that software.” The name of the software is ‘Equalizer’. It was written as long back as eighties.
Stephen Hawking still uses it because, in the words of Arun, “He finds it best and it works for him. Now, nobody makes it anymore. He wanted a change in the software that was required and the source code for the original software had been lost. So, we told them that we will do it as an open source software. The source code will always be available on the internet.”
Arun Mehta’s first reaction was, “We were very much surprised that a person from an eminent learning institution such as Cambridge should approach a small company like ours. We are happy to meet this challenge as it will have a major impact on our company and its future. This is how disability and ideas have become a major concern for others.
What’s more important for Arun Mehta is, “We have been working on the community radio, because FM radio is the only telecommunications device that a poor person can afford. Therefore, we set up a strong low-power station also in a village in Andhrapardesh. Now, we have been having disputes with the government whether low-power FM broadcasting should be re-licensed or not. These are the areas where we are interested basically.
Bureaucratic hurdles
“The government has to make money out of absolutely everything. It does not believe in giving a spectrum for anything free-of-cost. Secondly, the bureaucrat still has the World War II mentality; the transmitters are for ‘spies’, they think. But now if a spy wants to send a message to a foreign country, he cannot just walk into a cyber café and send an e-mail from Hotmail. He will be a fool if he will use a transmitter; he will be caught straight away because transmitters are so easy to detect. This is a stupid mentality. Yet they think there are security concerns.
“Nevertheless, we are talking about is radios having a range of a kilometre or half a kilometer — like a wireless public address system. But they still raise security concerns.
“We have been discussing this with the government and we hope that we will progress with the government. In any case, low-power FM transmitters in the form of cordless microphones are in widespread use. We point this out to the ministry that the prime minister and the president of this country are regularly breaking what they consider is the law, because they engage in FM broadcast which is still illegal.”
Arun explains his interest in radiophony, “Yes, we are very much interested in using these technologies. You know that the audio is very important. Firstly, the poor people can use them, as they are cheap. Secondly, they are natural. The easiest way for us to communicate is audio. If you have to learn how to write, you go to school and college for many years. Producing video contents is difficult; it’s also expensive. But audio content is cheap to produce. Even the poor, illiterate people know how to speak. So it’s a very ‘democratic’ technology.”
Arun and his colleagues are trying to get better policies in place with regards to the internet and telecommunication in the country. We can learn a lot from his efforts.
The writer
