India's ICT Movement Gets a Pro-Poor Push

In this editorial on OneWorld's Digital Opportunity Channel, Royal D. Colle, International Professor Emeritus at Cornell University, shares his opinion on the National Alliance for Information and Communication Technologies for Basic Human Needs which set a goal to bring all of the India's 600,000 villages into the modern "information society" by 2007, the 60th anniversary of India's independence.

Prof. Colle opines that people need to be provided with more than just "service availability" and that in order for the National Alliance's goal to be sucessful, a national strategically-designed campaign needs to be mobilised to persuade urban and rural people alike about the value of knowledge, information and communication, and the role people at the grassroots level can play in contributing to information databases.

He uses the example of e-kiosks to support his opinion, "we know (as do many rural people) that it can cost much less to obtain a land record or birth certificate using an e-government kiosk than travelling to a government office, paying a fee (and a bribe) and returning a second time to pick up a document. However, focus group research in India reveals that many villagers do not know what a computer or Internet can do for them. Many do not know what a computer or the Internet is. Some among us will say that farmers and villagers know the value of information and they have indigenous knowledge that has guided their lives successfully for years. That is a highly romantic notion of the villager that is not borne out by careful study."

"From lessons learned in development communication projects, it is clear that people most in need of a specific information or communication service may not necessarily respond to simple service availability. Applying a “build it and they will come” approach is naïve."