Ramdin Chacha is known to us as the never-tiring man who always wants to do something to improve the lot of his village folks. Many of our readers have been following the developments in Chacha’s life. For those who have not, he is the universal Chacha of the sleepy village of Rampur. Some even called it "Sustrampur"—a village unperturbed by rest of the world. Here is a little more about Chacha.

Since the day Indram, Chacha’s favourite nephew, left for Abu Dhabi about five years ago, Chacha had not been his usual self. No longer was he the cheerful and jovial Chacha. He really missed his evening tête-à-tête with Indram. Therefore, when the zealous salesman of the local cellular operator introduced the little wonder to the naive Chacha by calling it a cordless phone, it brought sparkle in his eyes, the smile on his face, and really brought back his voice. The cheerful Chacha was back! Now, he would be able to talk to Indram as and when he liked. This is when we met him first. And that was about three years back, just after Chacha had acquired his most prized possession. He fondly called it buzzerbattoo—the one that liked to buzz. Most of us know it by another name—the cellphone. Chacha had always dreamt of getting a phone to his village one day. He never thought of getting anything for himself alone—all his possessions belonged to the village too. People of his village quickly realized the power of the buzzerbattoo. They could speak to their sons and nephews working in far-off places, especially the Gulf. Soon Chacha’s buzzerbattoo set the village buzzing and it became everyone’s favourite.

Chacha’s benevolence had earned him lots of bhatijas and bhatijis (nieces). The Buzzerbattoo contributed its best by connecting them to their families and earning goodwill for Chacha. It helped Chacha set up "Ramdin Travels" and "Ramdin Exports" with Chacha’s favourite destination being the Middle-East, where Indram lived. With this, Chacha truly arrived.

The business and social welfare needs introduced Chacha to the world of the Internet. He found it to be an ideal mate for the buzzerbattoo for written communications and was really enamoured by its power. Early 1998, while passing through London, Chacha came across the "Genie" service offering Internet on the cellphone. Chacha compares it to Alladin’s magic chirag. Since then, Chacha was determined to take the Internet to Rampur. Through his efforts, Rampur—now also called "Chustrampur"—managed to get a satellite hub. And with it arrived the Internet.

Chacha insists that the village-guru, Pandit Gyani Ram, learns and teaches children using the Internet. He himself tries to join in as he finds each session bringing to him new learning experience and new rewards. Not only that, he finds that the children are always discovering something new—for them as well as him. He believes that this appetite for "knowledge" will bring some kind of revolution in their lives. Though Chacha has learnt English, he does regret the lack of web sites and the contents in Hindi and other Indian languages for the benefit of all. If India can be the largest producer of films this should be easy too. Using the powerful tool of knowledge, Chacha believes that the Internet is the future way of life and business. He feels that the export of Rampur’s cottage/handicraft products, through e-commerce, can bring enormous prosperity to his village folk.

Chacha has a dream. He dreams of meeting his nephews and nieces on his buzzerbattoo and watching his favourite films too—wherever and whenever he wants. He truly awaits arrival of multimedia not only on the Internet, but also on cellphone which should be possible with the arrival of 3rd Generation (3G) cellular as we discussed earlier and would talk more about in future.

Chacha is always planning for the future—not only for himself, but also for all his nephews and nieces. He wants everyone to exchange/share experiences to prepare his folks for the knowledge-based "information age" of the new millenium. And help realize his dreams for them. Towards this end, he has started a web site: