digitally-oriented develop-
ment is as powerful and seductive as the
technology upon which it is based. No sin-
gle technological revolution has changed
the lives of current generations in the way
"
THE

KIOSK

NETWORKS
Information nodes in
the rural landscape
that the internet has. No cultural-techno-
logical innovation since Television has had
this kind of impact on the worlds econo-
my, its politics and its globalizing popular
cultures, or even on our cultural concep-
tions of distance and time. The promise
of digital development is that it might have
the same reach as the original internet
boom of the mid 1990s only this time,
the most disprivileged communities, those
who had missed out on earlier waves of
technology, might be able to leapfrog over
their more developed competitors. The
greatest obstacles to rural development
large distances and inadequate infrastruc-
ture might be obviated by instant access
to virtual institutions that provide bank-
ing, education, health care, neonatal in-
Aditya Dev Sood
CEO, Center for Knowledge Societies
ads@cks-b.org, www.cks-b.org
This article
critically examines
digital
development in
order to reveal the
larger impact that
ICTs could have
on rural
economies and
societies, it goes
further to identify
Information Kiosks
as the most
effective vehicle
for digital
development.
The percentage of growth that an IT firm like HP [Hewlett-Packard] will get
from people whose income is less than $1 a day is not going to be that signifi-
cant we dont have a significant percentage of our future growth even coming
from people who live on $3 a day I mean, do people have a clear view of what
it means to live on $1 a day? Theres no electricity in that house, none. So is
somebody creating computers that dont require electricity? No, there are no
solar power systems for less than a dollar a day, honestYoure just buying food,
youre trying to stay alive...
Bill Gates speaking at the Digital Dividend seminar.
i
there is an urgent need to examine the catalytic and enabling role to be
played by the government in ensuring that IT provides new opportunities for the
40% of the people who are living below poverty line, so that they may move
above it.
Government of India Working Group on Information Technology for Masses.
ii
Let IT remain the staple for academics and professionals. What will it mean for
people in the thousands of miserable villages in this misguided nation? Please,
please come out of your ivory tower and see the plight of Indian villages, sans
water, sanitation and decent living. Photographs of farmers posing with PCs and
fishermen analyzing computer printouts may befit a TV ad, but what are you
trying to sell?
Letter to the editor of a leading news magazine, responding to a feature on the digital empowerment of
rural India.
iii May – June 2003
| www.i4donline.net
15
formation, agricultural advice, and so
forth.
But skeptics also have good reason. Bill
Gates now infamous dictum, that a com-
puter cannot benefit someone earning less
than a dollar a day, remains a serious chal-
lenge to any attempt to ameliorate social
and economic disparities through Infor-
mation and Communications Technolo-
gies (ICTs).
iv
In South Asia, where most
rural populations lack running water and
sanitation systems, where electricity is still
a scarce and intermittent resource, where
roads are poor and education a luxury,
these technologies truly appear to be far
removed from the everyday concerns of the
poorest sections of the countryside. Al-
though, this article begins by critically ex-
amining the problems and possibilities of
digital development in order to reveal the
larger impact that ICTs could have on ru-
ral economies and societies, it goes further
to particularly identify Information Kiosks
as the most effective vehicle for digital
development.
Emergence of Information
and Communications Sectors
As is well known by now, Indias IT sector
took off in the early 1980s with the estab-
lishment of off-shore development cent-
ers. Relatively cheap English-speaking
engineering and technical talent were em-
ployed at centers in Bangalore and Chen-
nai, then Hyderabad, and now in the
suburbs of New Delhi (NOIDA). Since
the liberalization of the Indian economy
in the early 1990s, the Indian government
has relentlessly promoted the IT sector as
the harbinger of the nations economic as-
pirations. Even though the country pos-
sesses only 10 million Personal Computers
(PCs; Pentium I or superior), it houses the
largest number of software professionals
outside California, whose efforts have re-
sulted in the export of software worth more
than 10 billion dollars, much of it to the
United States.
The initial euphoria surrounding In-
dias successful software export industry has
now given way to a new introspection into
the reasons why these intellectual and hu-
man resources have not driven improve-
ments in Indias public and private
institutions, education systems, and infra-
structure. These reasons are not hard to
find: (i) the Indian software industry solves
small components of larger problems for
international clients; (ii) this work is usu-
ally protected by confidentiality agree-
ments; (iii) many Indian software
professionals and companies compete for
the same international contracts; (iv) the
opportunity costs of working for Indian
versus international clients is very high;
and finally (v) low teledensity, computer
usage, literacy, the inadequacies of regional
language software interfaces, and other
obstacles of Indias developing infrastruc-
ture, coupled with regulatory hurdles have
inhibited such ventures.
None of this prevented Andhra
Pradeshs Chief Minister, Chandrababu
Naidu from crafting an aggressive state
policy to attract IT-oriented investments,
simultaneously claiming that this sector
served the larger public interest. The con-
straints of electoral politics in Indias largely
rural society have meant that economical-
ly liberal and technologically sophisticat-
ed leaders could not afford to leave
themselves open to the charge of promot-
ing IT at the expense of rural development,
and this is a fine line to walk: Even as he
invited Microsoft to set up a software cent-
er in the Hyderabads technology park,
Naidu also installed a highly sophisticat-
ed network of communications systems in
his home constituency of Kuppam, as a
model for other regions of the state. Be-
ginning in 1996, he was the first Indian
politician to advocate eGovernance for
making the state machinery more respon-
sive and sensitive to citizen needs at the
district and panchayat level. These poli-
cies are being emulated at the national level
through an IT for the Masses policy state-
ment. Neighbouring Karnataka is one
among many other states of India to have
issued an IT policy statement directed to-
wards the common man. Naidus solu-
tion to the political dilemma of promoting
high-tech alongside rural empowerment,
therefore, long anticipated current inter-
national debates on digital divide.
Despite the on-going deregulation of
Indias telecommunications sector, its na-
tional teledensity (telephones per hundred
persons) has improved very slowly, from
.06 in 1990, to 3 today (compare with
China at around 11). Voice over Internet
Protocol (VoIP), and Wireless-in-Local-
Loop (WiLL or WLL) technologies, how-
ever, now appear set to offer cheaper and
lighter forms of telecom infrastructure that
should improve rural access exponential-
ly. The idea of non-elites using and bene-
fiting from ICTs has begun to gain
currency with the number of cell phone
users rising to 15 million Indians. Never-
theless, the export-oriented software indus-
try has yet to take full advantage of the
opportunities presented by the newly net-
worked home market. A new synergy be-
Photo © CKS 2003
Gyandoot Soochanalaya in Dhar,
Madhya Pradesh, India
i4d |
May – June 2003
16
tween the infotech and telecom sectors in
India could create a profound social and
economic revolution in rural communi-
ties across South Asia.
Technology driven social
change in South Asia
The problems and potential of ICT-driv-
en projects in South Asia are truly enor-
mous. This region hosts an extraordinary
concentration of new technology driven
companies, tech-savvy administrators and
managers, a political class newly sophisti-
cated to the possibilities of IT, social en-
trepreneurs and NGO institutional
structures that could all come together to
bring the benefits of networked technolo-
gies to rural and disprivileged groups. And
yet, we must face the frustrations of inter-
mittent, inconsistent electrical power, ar-
chaic, scarce and unreliable telephony and
net-connectivity, neo-feudal politico-busi-
ness consortia that hinder or hijack devel-
opmental efforts, deeply ingrained
ideologies of caste-hierarchy, gender ine-
quality, and religious-communal differ-
ence, as well as significant deprivations of
basic human needs. These limitations cast
grave doubt over the optimism of those
attempting to use emerging technologies
for developmental purposes.
A common objection to IT initiatives
suggests that they are premature, or that
they put the cart before the horse, in as
much as electricity, telephony, and con-
nectivity are highly erratic and variable in
many parts of South Asia. Moreover, more
basic kinds of infrastructu