Social, governance, and economic impact assessment of information and communication technology interventions in rural India

Among the many initiatives in using information and communication technologies (ICTs) for development, telecenters or kiosks occupy a prominent place. These centers provide public access to these technologies and related services through computers and internet. The last decade has seen many such initiatives being launched to bring the benefits of ICTs to the rural population in many countries. As most of these initiatives are relatively recent, there have been few evaluations of their social and economic impacts in their communities. There is also lack of a good understanding about a sound conceptual and theoretical framework for planning and design of such centers. This study seeks to fill a portion of this information gap by focusing on assessing the social, governance, and economic impacts of one such relatively large project in rural India and examining its implications and sustainability within the framework of the theory of diffusion of innovations. The project under study is the widely acclaimed Sustainable Access in Rural India (SARI) project, which has established computer and internet kiosks in over 40 rural communities in Tamil Nadu state in India. The kiosks provide basic computer education, e-mail, web browsing, e-government, health, agricultural and veterinary services. There are four major findings that emerge from this study. First, though the kiosks have succeeded in establishing a visible presence in their communities, their overall reach is still limited. Their users are mostly school and college students, male, and come from a higher socioeconomic status when compared to that of their communities. In this sense, the kiosks may be leading to further exacerbation of the existing socioeconomic inequities within their communities.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2004

Author dc:creator

• Kumar, Rajendra, 1967-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Alice H. Amsden.

• Urban Studies and Planning.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/17697

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/17697