The Digital Village

India's educated elite, responsible for India's successful technology industry are also an altruistic bunch. They've been giving back in the hopes of bridging the gap between the rich and India's 700 million poor -- the gap between the lower-caste and upper-caste. They've been the driving force behind getting information to India's mostly illiterate poor. Information that can be used to help with crops, health care, education and dealing with the bureaucrats more effectively. This use of technology for the common good is a grand social experiment that could be a lesson to other third world countries trying to break the cycle of poverty. It also has lessons for the developed world -- instead of thinking of the world's poor and third world counties as a burden, they could be thought of as a 5-billion market. [BusinessWeek's Graphics: The Stats and Tech for the Masses.]