Sanchari-Kathegaara: Community Mesh Networks with Tribal Settlements in Karnataka

How do we use community mesh networks as a way to make open data accessible to rural communities in eco sensitive zones that are denied access to infrastructure? This talk presents our effort and learnings from Sanchari-Kathegaara. A community mesh network engagement aimed at creating offline first, open data, community infrastructure. This engagement is being carried out in a tribal settlement called Hara in Kundapura Taluk, coastal Karnataka. The talk will explore how digital exclusion manifests in tribal hamlets and present our approaches to understanding and building accessible technology with the community.

The main aim of this project is is about imagining how open data can be as accessible as part of public infrastructure to reach communities that are systemically excluded. This emerged from Samagra Arogya, along term engagement where we are collaborating with Gram Panchayats to understand social determinants of health. Access to infrastructure and education are key Social Determinants of Health and mesh networks as an intervention emerged from it. Our approach incorporates place based participatory design methodologies developed through sustained community engagement.

How do we then imagine technical innovations through the inclusion of mesh networking components in public infrastructure as a way to connect houses in remote settlements like this with each other and to nearby government infrastructure like Gram Panchayat offices, libraries, and Primary Health Centers.

We are currently using wireless mesh equipments and lightweight servers to create mesh networks as a way to work with children in the area and finding ways that they can use in the mesh. For this we are using AC mesh devices and Raspberry Pi servers, there are two types of servers that exist on the network at this stage:

Sanchari.local

Sanchari (Kannada for "traveler") contains services that builds over Creative Commons content to create culturally contextual, offline repositories for communities to use and access. We've built Kannada-first interfaces with search functionality and navigation based on community feedback for non-text-literate users through visual, audio-video focused design. Sanchari contains

- A homepage which gives an overview of all the tools and applications deployed on the server with image and audio thumbnails and information.

- A custom Kannada interface for Arvind Gupta Toys repository with a search feature.

- An instance of Kiwix with offline Wikipedia and other offline tools

- A custom interface for Pratham books StoryWeaver.

- An instance of Jellyfin with videos, songs and movies

Kathegara.local

While Sanchari brings external repositories, Kathegaara (Kannada for "storyteller") enables communities to create their own multimedia archives and repositories. We are designing and questioning the modes, tools and mediums that enables community members to collaboratively build knowledge archives in their own languages and metadata formats. Kathegara contains

- A home page which gives an overview of all the tools and applications deployed on this server with image and audio thumbnails and information.

- An instance of Terrastories - a map based tool used for building audio-visual repositories of place-based knowledge.

- A custom forked instance of Papad - an audio/video archival and annotation tool developed by Janastu.

- An instance of Whitebophir - a locally-hosted whiteboarding toolAn instance of Nextcloud - a file sharing application to access files on a community server. The data remains available only via the local server.

Creating fully offline Kannada first archives of content in Creative Commons: Making open-data in Kannada-first interfaces that are visual, bilingual, audio-video focused.

Building tech with communities: How does tech enable communities to preserve knowledge systems, what it means to share them, with whom and how does community own data?

Deploying mesh infrastructures in challenging terrains: Deploying mesh networks in forest zones using AC mesh, Power beams and Raspberry Pi nodes.

Community networks as possible last mile connectors for local governance bodies: Exploring how Gram Panchayats, Libraries, Public Health Centers and other bodies can use community mesh networks as a way to reach settlements that are often excluded.