QUIZZING is definitely in. If Star TV used the quiz format to revive its flagging fortunes, the Karnataka IT Secretary is using the same model to get a feel of the IT savvy in rural Karnataka and a tip on which regions hold the greatest promise for growth of the industry. IT Quiz 2000, as the three-week-long contest was called, was open to only those students who lived ``beyond the corporation limits'' in each of the towns in the 27 districts. This ensured that the participation was from the ``truly rural'', said the organisers. The brief to quizmaster, Mr Giri Subramanium, was simple. Find out the IT acumen of these students and create a ``comfort level'' with IT for them, he was told. ``Teachers as well as students needed to be told that IT was within their reach and was not to be feared,'' said Mr Subramanium, of Quizbrain.com, an indiainfo.com affiliate. Mr Subramanium will now submit a report to the IT department on the quiz, which will in turn help it identify the IT strengths of the various zones and the amount of work that needs to go into each of them.

IT Quiz 2000 started with a bang. In the first round, 34,000 entries poured in instead of the 10,000 that the IT Department had expected. ``The awareness levels were way different from the common perception of small towns,'' said Mr Subramanium, who has finished all but two rounds now. ``In places such as Mysore, Hubli and Mangalore, we had to shift to the second set of `difficult questions' to retain interest levels,'' he said. The prizes sponsored by TCS consist of scholarship amounts of Rs 50,000, Rs 30,000 and Rs 20,000 for the three State-level winners and Rs 10,000, Rs 5,000 and Rs 3,000 for the first three winners of the zonal level competition.

By Chitra Phadnis

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