• Telecentres & kiosks

Telecentres and kiosks

This collection of four essays asks:

• how ICT can be brought to the 600,000 Indian villages?
• how is India empowering the poor and marginalised to participate in the emerging knowledge society?
• how will India provide voice to the millions of citizens?

The intended audience includes practitioners, policy makers, planners, and researchers on the emerging ICTD paradigm in India. Some of the finding include:

• the development impact of ICT on society can be assessed using the capabilities approach since various forms of ICTs infuse knowledge and help human capability expansion
• ICT can assist in reaching the MDGs by amplifying citizen’s voices, promoting quality in health and education services, and broadening the livelihoods base of the poor and marginalised
• integrating the human development approach to nation-wide ICT initiatives is essential for a successful outcome
• rural areas are considered attractive locations for knowledge centres given high population density. The service provisioning however is challenged by e.g. income poverty and illiteracy. But projects have demonstrated that rural people acquire ICT skills fast, even without high-levels of literacy
• building institutional linkages spanning across the horizon of social, cultural, economic, and political entities is efficient for poverty reduction
• a new project evaluation methodology based on the capability approach is proposed. The methodology has four indicators on the local community’s:
  • access to information from the state, market and civil society organisations
  • ability to process and evaluate information
  • to assimilate information in their own lives and produce information for others
  • to advocate for local knowledge in public spheres
• the missing piece in previous projects has been lacking appropriate governance, human, services and technological capacities.

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