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Governance of Rural Information and Communication Technologies: Opportunities and Challenges THE world in which we live in is about coexistence of paradoxes alongside enormous opportunities. You guessed it right, we are talking about the era of globalisation. The information and communication technologies (ICT), which have been instrumental in transforming the world in to a ‘global village’, have at the same time posed enormous challenges to the ‘villages’. The human history today is experiencing something momentous and unprecedented as for the first time, the world urban population has exceeded the rural population. Globally, especially in the developing countries, the ICT has created opportunities but its distribution has been uneven. As a result, a digital divide has been created between the rural and the urban. However, we cannot blame the technology for the divide. The fact is, the same technology has been differently received by different societies and cultures, and depending upon the level of preparedness in terms of human development index, the implications have been different
The volume is the result of presentations and deliberations made by the participants in a workshop organised at the institute of Rural Management, Anand, Gujarat, in December 2004. The participants included policy formulating and implementing agencies such as government and non-government organisations, national-level academic institutes such as the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmadabad, National Institute of Rural Development and organisations conducting business with rural development focus like ITC’s e- choupal, etc. If the ICT-based projects are properly conceptualised and implemented, then it can do wonders for the millions of poor people living in the rural areas. Sample some of them as brought about by the Information Village Research Project in Pondicherry run by M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation: Fishermen like Pannerselvan now get life-saving weather alerts about sea storms, thanks to information relayed by the Village Knowledge Centre (VKC) via a loudspeaker in the street; Kandipan, a middle-aged farmer, has been able to find better prices for his paddy crops in another nearby market via the local VKC, instead of getting the lower rate from a local trader; VKCs in coastal belts have helped set up cooperative units for the fishing community so that they can make ornaments from shells, during times when they do not fish in order to enable fish stocks to replenish themselves; a group of women from Kizhoor village were able to leverage the entrepreneurship support groups at the local VKC to help them set up their own business unit for making and marketing incense sticks. Likewise, the reach is enormous in the field of primary education and health care. The tools like telemedicine and similar other measures can transform the entire rural landscape. A chapter, e-Governance and Citizens Charter, by Anita Karwal, for instance, highlights the challenges involved in implementing an ICT-based project within a government set-up. Based on her experiences as Collector in Ahmadabad district, under whose supervision the Jan Sewa Kendra project was conceived, designed and implemented, Karwal recounts some of the lessons learnt during the project while underlining the fact that ICT holds incredible promises if backed by sustained efforts and leadership. Given the magnitude of target groups and coverage areas with obvious challenges like technical, geographical and financial bottlenecks in the rural infrastructure, the future of rural ICT, however, lies in bringing in more private initiatives and public private partnership wherever possible. To recognise this potential, various agencies have piloted many projects showcasing usability of ICT at its core to extend services in the rural sector. Some of these projects are being considered for scale up by the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP). Sadly, most of these projects remain ‘supply driven’ and not ‘citizen-centric’ and hence suffer from a major limitation. The book includes 17 chapters by contributors from diverse but related fields and is extremely rich in content and field experiences. This is a must read for researchers, academia, policy and plan makers.
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In
India a large number of its more than a billion populations live in
villages and derives its sustenance from agriculture and related rural
activities. With almost abysmal infrastructure in terms of road,
electricity and transportation networks, the thought of rural ICT
seems a cruel joke to an ordinary person. This book, however, provides
a counterpoint. It highlights the possibilities of tremendous rural
transformations based on the ICT intervention in the area of
governance, health, education and business.