Social development in Indian rural communities: Adoption of telecentres

It is 60 years since India got freedom, but she continues to live in her villages. This paper outlines the problem faced by India in dealing with her rural poor, who constitute about 72.2% of 1027 million and live in 600,000 villages with poor or no infrastructure, and suggests ways to increase their income level. The government must redefine its policies and strategies, and deploy information and communication technologies (ICTs) innovations with application and active participation from development organizations (DOs) to achieve this. This paper highlights the status of ICTs in India and their role in social development, and discusses the case of telecentres, their benefit and overview of current initiatives with select examples. Further, it deals in detail with the sustainability of telecentres and analyses the emerging scenario using Gartnerʹs Hype Cycle. The study concludes that many ICT initiatives in India lack a comprehensive plan in addressing the target population, struggle to sustain due to insufficient infrastructure and are too ambitious as they are not equipped with appropriate technologies in serving the rural communities. To be successful, a telecentre model needs to be built upon the principles of multi-stakeholder partnership involving the government, private organizations and DOs for combining innovation, responsiveness with stability and public participation, and needs to include massive numbers of excluded people into the information world.