With the auctioning of third generation (3G) and Broadband Wireless spectrums sometime during this year, we will reach closer to the dream where telephony and internet connectivity could become ubiquitous in rural areas. And everyone in our remote and scattered villages can access essential services such as distance education, health care and mainstream commerce.

With 3G, and introduction of mobile-commerce, a migrant in Mumbai can transfer money to his family living in a remote village via his mobile phone. This could also help him circumvent the eighteenth century postal network and generally uncooperative postal workers where a money transfer 100 kilometers away through an ordinary money order, even today could take more time then it would take him to deliver it in person, have lunch, and just have enough time left to catch up with old friends from the village school.

Much has been said about how technology creates a level playing field for everyone. We rarely spare a thought to how technology has saved us every time it seemed we would be sucked into the horrors faced by third world countries, when we had every ingredient necessary to invite such a catastrophe.

Needless to say that Internet saved us the trouble of developing world-class products and competing with international companies when the economy opened up in early nineties and we didn’t have the resources to make up for the lost time. Heck, it even saved us from the ignorance of our policy planners, when the decaying urban and industrial infrastructure could have choked whatever talent and entrepreneurial resilience we had left in the country.

Now Internet is even giving impetus to young Indian entrepreneurs who are setting up businesses online with shoestring budgets – even if the best they can come up with is selling cinema tickets, blog advertisements or chicken salads off the Internet.

However, we are still many years away from attaining first-world standards in numerous areas. Since technology has come to our aid every single time in the past, I am thinking how it can help us rid ourselves of ills that are holding us back. Here are a few ideas I have come up with. Technology innovators and patent usurpers, please take note.

Our education sector is in doldrums. Things have reached such a nadir that Kapil Sibal, the new HRD minister recently said that syllabuses of IITs and IIMs need to be changed and nobody raised an eyebrow. It is an accepted fact in the industry that a good number of graduates from our universities and institutes are unemployable. The quality of scientific research done locally is not much to speak about either.

Sundry columnists blame regulatory bodies like the UGC and AICTE and the Medical Council of India for not having been able to keep up with the rest of the world. However, anyone who has been brave enough to go through the rigmarole of our educational system knows where the real fault lies. It lies in the dispassionate way an average teacher takes to his profession. There are exceptions, of course, in urban areas or at top ranked universities. But I am talking about a general sense of apathy at all levels. A whole epic can be written about this issue and I will save it for some other time.

To come to the point, I have reasons to believe I have found the real reason. So I am looking for a way in which technology can turn disinterested teachers into passionate mentors, who would then mould the lives of all students as if their own lives depend on it.

The solution could lie in a technology that, for now, can be called the Progeny Projector (PP) technology. I see a future in which all classrooms in the country are fitted with Progeny Projectors. Here’s how they work: They are activated when a teacher enters a classroom, and the PPs emit three-dimensional image holograms that envelope every student in the class and make them appear like the teacher’s own children and their close cousins. Needless to say that nobody in our country messes up with anyone’s life where family is involved.

Then there is the more grim issue of malnourished children. Forty six per cent of children under the age of five are malnourished – over 2.4 million die every year due to malnourishment. All ideas have failed. Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) and Midday meals haven’t made much of a dent. NREGS is new and it will take years to affect a total change — corruption has already found its way there. Thought leader Gurcharan Das talks about food stamps, but that may leave us with another problem – that of a malnourished bureaucracy in the countryside.

I have a solution for this issue as well. This technology is called KCS, which is short for Karma Cursing Sensory technology. Without a single exception, every Indian mother curses her Karma for all ills that befall her family, especially her children. We can have KCS devices installed in all our villages.

Whenever a child cries from hunger, the mother will curse her karma or destiny and the KCS devices would record the cursing frequency on an hourly basis. The sensors, in turn, could decide the karma of the local development officer appointed by the government entrusted to implement the myriad childcare schemes.

For example, 10 beeps could mean the officer loses his salary for a week. Fifty beeps could mean no deputation in Delhi and 100 beeps could ensure permanent posting for him in that area. More than 500 beeps would blow off the fuse of the generator that is supplying electricity to his house in a village that most certainly is devoid of power. Trust me, this would work like magic.

Another (and the final one, for the lack of space) social malaise for which I would like a disruptive technology, is: crime against women. Eve teasing is common on our streets, in railway compartments, outside colleges. Women are not safe inside houses either. Yesterday, the Supreme Court expressed concern that bride burning cases are on the rise. If eve teasers and molesters can’t get them, moral policemen most certainly will. All measures have seemingly failed.

However, I have ideated a disruptive force for this as well. It answers to the name of AMS, short for an Anti-Molester Suit. It is a no-brainer, actually. We are speaking of an ordinary jacket or a vest lined with electric wires on the outside, which in turn is connected to a small battery embedded in the jacket. The AMS can be fitted with an array of devices– a GPS device, a fish-eye camera, a high-decibel yeller, etc.

When a molester or a moral policeman approaches a woman, she can activate various AMS devices based on her threat perception. The high-decibel yeller could be her first line of defense. However, knowing how men react in our public places when women scream for help, this would not be of much use.

High-voltage electric wires would be most effective in such situations. Any type of indecent touching and the high-voltage electric shocks are activated that can render the assaulter sterile, temporarily or permanently, depending on the audacity of the act.

The suit will be fire-proof as well, and could smell kerosene or any flammable material from a distance and send calls for help, along with images of the scene for evidence, to the local police station, for instance. The possibilities are endless.

As I wrote earlier, I have disruptive ideas that can rid our country of all ills. Corruption; divisive politics; paucity of ideas, quality and originality in architecture and creative arts; poor infrastructure. You name it, I have a technology for it.