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India diary, day 2: Emergency calls and rural life
Snake bite and sweet coffee

By Steve Ranger

Published: Monday 05 March 2007

Monday 5 February - Hyderabad

There's a crash, with two motorcyclists hurt. Then a snake-bite victim, and then an attempted suicide, before an accident in a railway yard.

Just another Monday afternoon for the Hyderabad emergency services.

My day starts with a journey across to Hyderabad's ugly twin sister city of Secunderabad to visit the Byrraju Foundation, a charitable organisation working to improve the lives of rural Indians.

Special Report: Inside India

In February silicon.com's Steve Ranger visited the Indian tech hotspots of Bangalore, Mumbai, Pune and Hyderabad to explore the exploding Indian offshore tech and BPO industry. Keep up with his daily diaries here.

♦ India diary, day 1: Cyberbad on Sunday
♦ India diary, day 2: Emergency calls and rural life
♦ India diary, day 3: Inside the outsourcing campus
♦ India diary, day 4: Hyderabad's tech park
♦ India diary, day 5: Margaritas to Mumbai
♦ India diary, day 6: Prime Minister's question time
♦ India diary, day 7: Mobiles in Mumbai
♦ India diary, day 8: Pune or bust
♦ India diary, day 9: An auto-rickshaw ride and a catwalk show
♦ India diary, day 10: Lost in Pune
♦ India diary, day 11: I heart Bangalore
♦ India diary, day 12: Searching for the next big thing
♦ India diary, day 13: Thirsty in Bangalore

Over cups of extremely sweet coffee its lead partner Verghese Jacob explains why the foundation focuses on the villages and not the poverty that clearly exists in the cities.

As the IT industry has grown, the Indian cities have benefited a lot but that prosperity hasn't trickled down to the village level, he explains.

And so, while corporate social responsibility might be a fashionable little catchphrase for western businesses trying to show a more caring side, for Indian companies - and the IT sector in particular - it's taken very seriously. One area of interest is expanding the potential for sending BPO work outside of the cities and into villages.

I'm taken out to see some of the work that is being done to help the villagers in the area. I'm shown the school in the village of Kondlakoyya - where the kids are happy to show off their computing skills - and then onto a new water purification centre which has been set up by the foundation.

This can clean 1,000 litres per hour and the water is sold to the 700 families in the village for slightly more than it costs to produce, with this profit reinvested in the village.

For the afternoon I'm off to the Emergency Management and Research Institute (EMRI) in Secunderabad.

In India there is currently no unified emergency number like 999 in the UK or 911 in the US. Instead each service has its own number - 101 for police, 102 for fire. Ambulance services are also pathcy - and much cover is provided by private hospitals.

EMRI has set up 108 as the emergency number for the state of Andhra Pradesh, starting with coverage of the Hyderabad area, and has its 75 ambulances deployed in 25 towns. Around 30 per cent of cases are road traffic accidents (no surprise there), while around 16 per cent are cardiac cases. Like the Byrraju Foundation, it is funded by Ramalinga Raju, the chairman of Satyam.

It aims to take one million calls per year and save one million lives by 2010. In the last year it calculates it has saved 6,538 lives by sending its own ambulances out to emergencies. It's even had 53 children born in its ambulances.

The ambulances take patients to any private hospital where they will be stabilised for a day for free, with 852 hospitals signed up. Venkat Changavalli, EMRI's CEO, explained: "Around 80 per cent are the people that can't afford a dime to call the number."

It's an innovation that brings together a couple of the big trends in India. The IT companies have plenty of experience of building call centre operations thanks to all the offshoring. And as the Indian economy booms more people are carrying mobile phones - meaning they are better able to report accidents.

Changavalli offers: "1992, when I was made a CEO, was the first time I had a telephone in the house and now every kid has one in college."

I'm taken down to the call centre to watch the operators work. The calls they take can be shocking - crashes, poisoning and other injuries - but they calmly take the details and pass them to dispatchers who send out the ambulances.

I watch one of dispatchers sending out an ambulance to a snake bite victim in a serious condition. He sends the details to the driver by SMS and calls to double check. Even before he's finished another call has come in, about an accident in Hyderabad.

It's impressive to see such an operation working. But all this talk of road accidents makes me quite nervous on the bumpy journey back into town.

Have you visited India to check out the outsourcing options? Or have you been affected by offshoring here in the UK? We want to hear your stories about India. Leave your comments below or email editorial@silicon.com.