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From the official design challenge:

After the Mobile networks was introduced to Kerala (India) in 1997, the fisherman soon began investing in mobile phones which allowed them to call local markets while they were still at sea and determine where they would receive the best price for their catch. The improvements in information flow facilitated by mobile phones helped to raise the fisherman's profits by 8%, lower consumer prices by 4% and reduce the average 'catch wastage' from around 6.5% to almost zero...

...Simply meeting the communication and entertainment needs will not mean much unless we answer the vital question, Is there a social responsibility while extending mobile connectivity throughout the world? We need to focus on how mobile phone can help the overall socio-economic development. There is also a need to focus on the kind of mobile user experience that must be delivered for these new consumers?

How can you harness the power of mobile telephony to enhance the livelihood and quality of life of the farming community of India?

USID Foundation and Nokia are behind the contest. As someone working on agriculture and aquaculture in Trinidad and Tobago, I find it odd that a contest would be geopolitically limited in such a manner - especially since it cites global food shortage. Global. While those who are heavily tied to a bureaucracy that supports geopolitically separated contests and support, I have to wonder: with such a common theme around the globe, why just India? Why not Latin America and the Caribbean as well?

The answer, of course, is that funding agencies just haven't caught up with the technologies and world view that they so often expound.

Mobile phones form an integral part of communication in agriculture here in Trinidad and Tobago, and I suspect that this is already true globally. Increasing that communication as well as the communication ability is of global concern and shouldn't be limited to India... but, to be fair, each nation has it's own geopolitical challenges. The commonality of those challenges can probably be found in the disparity of telecommunications ability, which is largely a legal framework issue instead of a technology issue.

And let's not forget that the Simputer was designed for all of this... and that the hardware is open to anyone to create. Add that technology to a mobile phone and Nokia may be quite displeased with some of the results.