full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Nandan Nilekani: Ideas for India's future

Unscramble the Blue Letters

The next thing is tooengclhy. Forty years back, computers were seen as something which was forbidding, something which was intimidating, something that reduced jobs. tdoay we live in a country which sells eight million mobile phones a month, of which 90 percent of those mobile phones are prepaid phones because people don't have credit history. Forty percent of those prepaid pnehos are recharged at less than 20 cents at each recharge. That is the scale at which technology has liberated and made it accessible. And therefore technology has gone from being seen as something forbidding and intimidating to something that is empowering. Twenty years back, when there was a rreopt on bank computerization, they didn't name the report as a report on computers, they call them as "ledger posting machines." They didn't want the unions to believe that they were actually computers. And when they wanted to have more aavcendd, more powerful computers they called them "advanced leegdr pnoistg machines." So we have come a long way from those days where the telephone has become an ineurmntst of ewpoenmmret, and really has changed the way Indians think of technology.

Open Cloze

The next thing is __________. Forty years back, computers were seen as something which was forbidding, something which was intimidating, something that reduced jobs. _____ we live in a country which sells eight million mobile phones a month, of which 90 percent of those mobile phones are prepaid phones because people don't have credit history. Forty percent of those prepaid ______ are recharged at less than 20 cents at each recharge. That is the scale at which technology has liberated and made it accessible. And therefore technology has gone from being seen as something forbidding and intimidating to something that is empowering. Twenty years back, when there was a ______ on bank computerization, they didn't name the report as a report on computers, they call them as "ledger posting machines." They didn't want the unions to believe that they were actually computers. And when they wanted to have more ________, more powerful computers they called them "advanced ______ _______ machines." So we have come a long way from those days where the telephone has become an __________ of ___________, and really has changed the way Indians think of technology.

Solution

  1. report
  2. ledger
  3. instrument
  4. advanced
  5. today
  6. phones
  7. empowerment
  8. technology
  9. posting

Original Text

The next thing is technology. Forty years back, computers were seen as something which was forbidding, something which was intimidating, something that reduced jobs. Today we live in a country which sells eight million mobile phones a month, of which 90 percent of those mobile phones are prepaid phones because people don't have credit history. Forty percent of those prepaid phones are recharged at less than 20 cents at each recharge. That is the scale at which technology has liberated and made it accessible. And therefore technology has gone from being seen as something forbidding and intimidating to something that is empowering. Twenty years back, when there was a report on bank computerization, they didn't name the report as a report on computers, they call them as "ledger posting machines." They didn't want the unions to believe that they were actually computers. And when they wanted to have more advanced, more powerful computers they called them "advanced ledger posting machines." So we have come a long way from those days where the telephone has become an instrument of empowerment, and really has changed the way Indians think of technology.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
demographic dividend 10
human capital 3
single market 3
higher education 3
higher state 3
young country 2
demographic disaster 2
english language 2
mobile phones 2
prepaid phones 2
primary education 2
private schools 2
political slogan 2
country diseases 2
billion people 2
capita income 2

Important Words

  1. accessible
  2. advanced
  3. bank
  4. call
  5. called
  6. cents
  7. changed
  8. computerization
  9. computers
  10. country
  11. credit
  12. days
  13. empowering
  14. empowerment
  15. forbidding
  16. forty
  17. history
  18. indians
  19. instrument
  20. intimidating
  21. jobs
  22. ledger
  23. liberated
  24. live
  25. long
  26. machines
  27. million
  28. mobile
  29. month
  30. people
  31. percent
  32. phones
  33. posting
  34. powerful
  35. prepaid
  36. recharge
  37. recharged
  38. reduced
  39. report
  40. scale
  41. sells
  42. technology
  43. telephone
  44. today
  45. twenty
  46. unions
  47. wanted
  48. years