multi-purpose tv aids india two-thirds of the world s population  4 billion people  live on $2 000 a year or less.  you might think that the last thing on their minds would be getting a television set or a computer. but that s not the case. many people in the developing world give up one of their daily meals so they can afford to buy a tv. and now  an indian-born computer engineer thinks he s come up with a way to give them cheap access to the internet. carnegie mellon professor raj reddy has spent the bulk of his professional career trying to find ways to make technology accessible to poor people. the first step is to figure out why poor people would want a personal computer and professor reddy thinks he has a pretty good idea of why they might.  i come from a village   says prof reddy   i know what the population is like  many of them are illiterate  and many of them have other concerns.   there  nobody will use it for the conventional uses of a pc  word processing and powerpoint   he said.  so it s clear to me that if people wanted to use pcs in a village - it has to usable by illiterate people and it must be primarily for entertainment  education  telemedicine  and access to expert advice.   prof reddy also thinks that tying it into some kind of aid package was the wrong approach. after all  he asked -- what aid group could possibly give expensive computers to 250 million less fortunate indians  let alone the billions of poor people around the world   instead  prof reddy decided to think of those 250 million indians as a potential market. the problem then becomes one of making the product compelling enough.  it must be so compelling that you would give up your third meal in order to have this   prof reddy says.  people do this today with television sets. if you go to india  and many other countries  they will first go get a television set before they worry about one more meal. why  because personalized entertainment has become very important.  this hatched a completely new idea. he calls it a pctvt - a personal computer  television and telephone all in one that runs on a normal desktop machine. literate users can surf through the applications with a keyboard and mouse but illiterate users can use what looks like a television remote control.  on the screen  pictures - not words - designate applications like tv  voice mail  and video e-mail. this dependence on graphics  video and audio means that a computer for an illiterate person needs 100 times more power and more memory than one for a phd. prassana rambathla  one of prof reddy s graduate students  says that  when you re talking illiterate you re talking audio and video  and that demands exponentially high bandwidth.   it can t choke at any point in time  and it has to withstand anything no matter what you re pressing.   the major part is making it foolproof  very tough  so that it never breaks   he says. the carnegie mellon team says this project is only possible because pcs are now so much cheaper and have built-in audio and video hardware and software. limited trials of the pctvt are due to start this month in the indian state of andhra pradesh.  although andhra pradesh has a fairly good infrastructure but work has to be done to ensure reliable connections to the net. prof reddy has teamed up with eric brewer at the university of california at berkeley. the answer  says prof brewer  is wi-fi.   we re looking at the thing you ll see in starbuck s or many other hotspots   he says.  we re doing a lot of work on long-distance wireless and how to make the network work better in the presence of intermittency  when the power goes up and down  and the links go up and down  and the computers you re connected to just get turned off for no reason.  prof reddy says he hopes to lease the pctvts for about $10 a month  and thinks indians will rent the units for the television and dvd capabilities. reddy says he can then introduce the pctvt s other technologies - such as video mail. for example  a farmer could use the pctvt s webcam to send a picture of a harmful insect to a local official who could send back a proposed course of action to the farmer. prof reddy thinks this kind of communication is the real pay-off.  the underlying problem   he says   is how you can increase their wealth and reduce their poverty and reduce their illiteracy  and improve their health care.   and what i m postulating is that this is the technology that will enable them. if i didn t have it  it would be an uphill battle. even with the technology it s an uphill battle. but i have a tool. there is hope. i can reach them in ways that have not been possible before.   clark boyd is technology correspondent for the world  a bbc world service and wgbh-boston co-production