India Launches Beta Version of Its Data Site
data.gov.in
data.gov.in
[EDIT:] It looks like it was developed on Drupal - (https://github.com/opengovplatform/opengovplatform/blob/mast...)
According to info, this is a Govt of US-India collaboration.
[EDIT-2:] I hope their data dump is not from the production servers (https://github.com/opengovplatform/opengovplatform/blob/668b...) Because I found this on grepping - https://gist.github.com/3608089
Everything being publicly auctioned and the free data available publicly will stop many of the scams of the nature India is going through right now.
I am not sure if any one would, but if someone comes up with a bill that holds the powers-that-be responsible under the "Duty to Report" bill, I would support them.
On reading both this post and the title of this thread, one might be misled into thinking that "it's" doesn't mean "it is".
But I seem to have grown out of that: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7E-aoXLZGY
It's pretty crazy that this sort of crap still gets attention in this day and age.
Anecdotal evidence.
> needless to say many treatment centers are based in cities and visited by what you might call a more educated and worldly crowd
Appeal to authority.
How about some actual scientific evidence? I'm no expert on the matter, but from what I can find on Wikipedia[0], the benefits of Ayurvedic medicne were inconclusive at best.
As someone who has spent time in medical research, I will admit my opinion is skewed. I've worked with plenty of researchers from India, and none of them have given any credence to Ayurvedic medicine. These are people who (like any researchers) will use any and all means available to them to come up with scientifically viable theories that they can use to get grants. If Ayurveda were as great as you claim it is, then they would have definitely given it a shot.
0: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayurvedic_medicine#Scientific_a...
I think at some level, you need to believe not all doctors wear white coats. modern medicine is a few hundered years old , but people have been getting sick and have been treated since the dawn of time. When a country sets up regulatory agencies ( http://www.ccimindia.org ) , qualifies practitioners and monitors the practice ( albeit poorly) , to dismiss the structure based on wikipedia articles is incorrect to say the least. if only conclusive evidence , agreed upon by everyone is acceptable we should have stopped taking aspirin a long time ago:) http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/950817/aspirin.shtml
https://www.google.com/search?q=define%3Aanecdotal&sugex...
"Best friend" has nothing to do with quality of data, in fact it might taint it. Also, causation must still be established, i.e. uncovering the mechanics of the treatment.
Also, your last few sentences are difficult to understand.
Like I said elsewhere here, I know several medical doctors (well qualified ones as well) who recommend ayurvedic treatments in certain situations (not the commercialized medicines you get in shops, but more basic 'take these things and grind them and eat it before lunch' medicines and they work reasonably well.
I think I'll take my anecdotal evidence over your link to a Wikipedia article stating inconclusive evidence.
For instance an year back for patient with chronic trigeminal neurological pain, we have given cyberknife treatment. Most advanced radiation thearphy for this kind of pains. Initially everything was ok and the pain bounced back in 3 months. We kept the patient continuously in pain killer for so many months, before they found a very old Ayurveda practitioner somewhere deep inside southern part of India. He assured them they can take the ayurvedic medicines along with our allopathic medicines and can discontinue all the allopathic and pain killers gradually.
We have accepted to that as honestly, we left with no other option as this is an very rare case and we recorded the patient status on day to day basis. After 2 months of consumption, to our surprise, the patient has shown gradual improvements and discontinued the pain killers in the 3rd month. After an year, she discontinued ayurvedic too and living a normal life.
We still have the entire medical history of the patient, and using ayurvedic as a lost resort for trigeminal neurologia issues. But I agree, this is a rare case, and it has to be thoroughly experimented for general practice.
Also, there is no reason to use "scientific" as a qualifier for proof. There is either sufficient evidence to constitute proof, or not, but there is no distinction between "scientific" proof and other proof.
Do you have reason to believe that herbal remedies don't work?
Ayurvedic research into herbal ingredients follow rigorous testing in labs, peer-reviewed research and case studies before it gets the govt of India stamp, quite similar to how mainstream medicine works, but of course you didn't care to educate yourself on that.
Looking at how much impact these platforms have induced even in developed nations there seems little incentive [some advantage definitely] to pursue such an initiative in a country like India. Millions die of basic malnutrition there, and perhaps their focus should be to make food available to consume, rather than data.
Of course the data will help but aren't we missing the big picture?
It is relevant to note that incentive for active development on Gov data-sets like these (believed to improve the existing establishment) is probably not as attractive an idea as it is to disrupt the legacy itself. That's how the relationship has been between the establishment and disruptive thinkers for centuries.
I mean all this seems like a complicated play of a ton of variables - democracy, education, impact, profit, consumption, need etc. Yet no doubt the launch is certainly a positive one from the largest democracy in the world.
Actually, it is part of the GoI's "Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy" that was made law. http://www.india.gov.in/allimpfrms/alldocs/16473.pdf
Looking at how much impact these platforms have induced even in developed nations there seems little advantage [some advantage definitely] of pursuing such an initiative in a country like India. Millions die of basic malnutrition there and perhaps the focus should be to make food available to consume, rather than data.
That is an extremely uninformed statement - one of the biggest challenges for efficiency in governance is accountability. Think of the govt. as a large legacy codebase, with the QA being done only by the parliamentarians/senators. Release of data allows QA by the ordinary citizens. India has a judicial process called Public Interest Litigation [1]. Combined with public datasets, it makes for powerful governance.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-interest_litigation_%28I...
"...one of the biggest challenges for efficiency in governance is accountability" is the problem to be solved, not a proof of success of any such initiative. Your argument doesn't seem to explain how we're going to improve the legacy system or even convince the developers to use these data-sets in the first place.
To crave for improvement in the Government (and its positive ramifications) is one thing but to get job done is an altogether different ball-game.
[1]: The "change" is about 77% of U.S. population.
Some of the UI differences include the addition of scrolling text and a crappier color scheme.
And for a country where mobile based access will presumably be quite common (as only 7% of the population has home internet), why isn't there a mobile site at launch?
About mobile based access: I don't have the specific numbers at this point, but most of the mobile access is through 'dumbphones'. So not having a mobile site is not exactly an issue.
Open Government Platform (OGPL) is being developed by nodal agencies from both the countries (National Informatics Centre, Department of Electronics & IT, Government of India and Office of Citizen Services & Innovative Technologies, General Services Administration, U.S. Government). To know more about the participating organizations visit following links
National Informatics Centre (http://www.nic.in)
General Services Administration (http://data.gov)
But in multiple situations I have seen significant web load performance improvements when the number of discrete files being loaded is reduced - merge all JS into one file, all CSS into another and sprite images. This is due to HTTP 2-connection rule.