Information Society Watch

2004, C.P. Chandrasekhar & Simran Kumar, APDIP

This study examines the ways in which ICT can be used in India to realise the stated, time-bound goals set by the United Nations’s Millennium Declaration in different sectors, and discusses constraints to using ICT as an tool for the MDGs, and the dangers involved in any excessive emphasis on ICT as a means to realising the MDGs. It examines the many routes through which ICT impact on human development is expected to occur, once access to the technology is provided to the people. It emerges that while there are indeed many experiments under way in India that seek to use ICT to improve the quality of life of the disadvantaged, there are also many constraints to realising the presumed potential uses of ICT for development. The primary and most important constraint is ensuring the diffusion of the technology. Crucial to such diffusion, through which the full human development potential of the technology is realised, is connectivity. Efforts to widen the spread of the communications infrastructure and increasing access to the technology are central to the ICT for development effort (Adapted from authors).

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