Story of Open Forum
Despite an increased appetite for risk, India is not an entrepreneur-friendly nation. While ample support is available for “proven” social development concepts, the majority avoids getting involved in attempts that are truly innovative and therefore, untested. The majority has chosen to label Open Forum as an “innovative social experiment”, which also bears the burden of being a “big commercial risk”. The majority of Indian IT firms have thrived in Bangalore, a place that comes closest to the famous Silicon Valley in terms of human capital and infrastructure. These firms have gained prominence by achieving “global standards” and “international certifications” in service delivery.

Open Forum, on the other hand, was conceived in Steel City, Jamshedpur, a city known more for being first planned city of India and environmental-friendly production practices, than for an innovative group of firms working in the Information Technology domain. Open Forum, however, chases standards of a different kind. These standards lie undefined in the villages of India and the rest of the developing world. It is expected that they would soon be discovered and documented, for the rest of the world to chase. With the success, of Antatah, Open Forum should emerge a truly Indian brand? An Indian organization specializing in the task of combining ICT and local resources for creating empowered networks, in low-income markets. The success and emergence of brands like Open Forum would be directly linked to India’s development in the global neighborhood.

Its journey as a “concept” had a major implications on its evolution as a “Social Organization”. It is because of having started on a “clean sheet” of paper that Open Forum has arrived at a cost and organizational structure suited for commercial replication of a bottom-up business concept. The guts to face “great problems” often leads to the joy of discovering “great ideas”.

Information needs of the community are immense. Presently they continue to remain unmet, whether its agriculture and related information for the farmers, educational opportunities for the students, health education, livelihood opportunities, employment opportunities for the unemployed, and access to market for the small entrepreneurs or government information for the citizens.

Every citizen has the right to information. The challenge is how to have access to the information and how to disseminate the information. Similarly, every community has the reservoirs of local knowledge. How to harness this local knowledge and what should be the sharing mechanism from one community to another; from one village to another; from one block to another; from one district to another and how to share the global knowledge, needed at the local level. It seems to be a marathon task. But, small efforts can show the way. On the one hand the process of collecting, collating, conceptualizing and disseminating of information and knowledge has to be built, on the other hand, the environment for accessibility and acceptability of the knowledge sharing mechanism has to be created with the ultimate goal of connecting communities and empowering people.