The big white bus chugs into some of the small towns of the country. With the sun beaming on top, the snazzy white giant — like the famed wandering magicians and street side gymnasts who found their place in the annals of colonial travelogues of India — has cast a spell on the children, transporting them into a whole new world.

As evening sets in, it heads for the “city centre”. Enthralled kids trudge toward the bus, but this time with hesitant parents in tow. Hesitancy soon makes way for a variety of expressions, if not surprise. For some, if not most, it's their maiden foray online and their first steps into the World Wide Web.

The large bus — with drawings across its body — is the Google Internet Bus. It's a free mobile cyber café that represents the company's initiative to “spread awareness” about Internet usage across the country.

Welcoming the initiative, R.C. Bhatia, a retired professor in a government college in Gwalior, says, “It is very useful especially for the students. I am very impressed.”

From being on the other side of the digital divide, 33-year-old Samita Thakur has become a YouTube fan. This government school teacher in Lucknow (UP) now uses the Internet to get a flair of the different teaching videos uploaded by her counterparts across the globe.

Internet up, but not quite

Thanks to the telecom boom, Internet penetration in the country has gone up a lot. It still, however, remains off the radar for the majority of people in tier II and tier III cities where metropolitan sophistication is yet to sink in. Internet penetration currently stands at 10 Internet users per 100 people, low compared with developed countries such as the US (78) and emerging ones such as China (36).

“We came up with a variety of options that included setting up kiosks as well as the bus. But after several discussions, we zeroed in on the bus. It was easier taking the Internet to the people rather than taking people to the Internet,” says Vinay Goel, Country Head, Products, Google India.

Since its journey began on February 3, 2009, the bus has already covered nearly 50,000 km across 11 states — nearly 2,000 locations in 130 small towns. It has touched nearly 6.5 million lives, according to Google, including a substantial number of first-time users. The Internet search giant says that one lakh people have signed up for their own Internet connection.

Measuring success

For the Google instructors, success comes when first-time users taste the potential of the Internet and foray into a hitherto unknown world, full of possibilities.

“I had no idea of the vast opportunities across the Internet,” says a Canara Bank manager posted in Thiruvananthapuram, of the ways in which the initiative has helped him.

An instructor on the bus recalled an incident where a millet farmer in Tumkur (Karnataka), happy with his experience, asked his son to go online to search for a job. In Krishnagiri (Tamil Nadu), an old couple found ways of overcoming low network coverage and embraced e-mail for connecting with their only son posted in Dubai.

While most students have been fans of Google Earth and other “education-related information”, adults have shown interest in topics that range from job search to matchmaking. The content — such as using regional languages to access the web and explore other options too — has come as a revelation for many “new users”.

Y. Niharika, a Std VIII student of the Gowtham Model School, Tirupathi (Andhra Pradesh), is happy with the “new avenues” she saw. “Other than regular searches, we learnt about new Web sites and ways of using Google Maps,” she adds.

Archana from Gandhinagar (Gujarat) raves about the use of regional languages for sending e-mail. “It's new. I never knew that I could type in English and yet get the mail across in Gujarati,” she says, promising to be a frequent user of the service.

Bumpy road

But the road towards Internet literacy hasn't been without bumps. Initially the bus was dependent on satellite connectivity to access the Internet. This required the team to fix a giant dish antenna.

“It was difficult travelling with the dish (antenna) on top of the bus. There were regulatory issues too,” an instructor points out.

However, technology has been a great leveller. With the advent of improved mobile networks and their data cards — including 3G connections, faster connectivity has been possible in the five workstations on board the bus.

Internet on the mobile

For a country crazy about mobile phones, the Google Bus has an additional surprise. It offers a sneak peek into the world of the mobile web. Each work station has a handset — ranging from a smartphone to the common man's web-enabled feature phone — to allow users to experience the Internet on the mobile phones. Pinku Kumar, an auto-driver from Patna, had brought a low-end smartphone but had no clue about his phone's Internet services.

The Internet Bus' Bihar trip came as a blessing. Not only did he learn to use the services, he is now hooked onto Google maps to get driving directions to areas he is unfamiliar with.

Even local cyber café operators and owners can take a crash course to keep up with the search engine's latest features.

“Our random surveys show that nearly 30 per cent of first-time users have started using the Net,” says Goel.

abhishek.l@thehindu.co.in

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