Information Society Watch

December 26, 2007,Indiatimes Infotech

This news article reports that the DoT has decided to fund innovations in communication technologies developed by small companies, entrepreneurs, universities or NGOs. The Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF), where currently over Rs 10,000 crore lie unutilised, will be used for this purpose.

December 2, 2007, Deccan Herald

The article focusses on the use of space technology for development in the rural sector. Along with geographical information services (GIS), such technologies can be effectively utilised to substantially improve the quality of services delivered by local bodies. The government commission appointed by the Prime Minister has studied the impact of these technologies both in the rural context in Jhabua in Madhya Pradesh as well as in Qatar in the Gulf.

September 2007, Ravi Gupta, I4donline

The agriculture sector in India is suffering from a number of issues which have resulted an alarming decline in the annual rate of growth of agricultural output in the last decade and a half. In this context, the article examines the potential of ICTs to improve the situation. It advocates the need to build an information network specifically tuned towards meeting the knowledge needs of farmers.

May 10, 2007, The Economist

The Economist reviews a paper by Robert Jensen, a developmental economist at Harvard University, who found that use of mobile phones by fishermen in Kerala promoted economic activity. Both articles suggest that under the right state-provisioned regulatory environments, mobile phones are a sustainable way to empower local communities with information and contribute to growth.

2006, Indian Institute of Information Technology

This note showcases the ICT project called aAQUA. aAQUA is an online multilingual, multimedia agricultural portal for disseminating information from and to the grassroots of the Indian agricultural community. aAQUA simultaneously addresses two major challenges in farmer outreach programmes - geographic reach and customised delivery, by using novel database systems and information retrieval techniques like intelligent caching, offline access with intermittent synchronisation, semantic-based search, etc.

Abdul Jaleel Tharayil & Rajeev K R

In a developing country like India, advances in ICTs have brought a lot of opportunities and perhaps a whole lot of challenges as well. One of the main challenges is the frightening gap between the information have-s and information have-nots -what is known as the digital divide. The paper highlights the concept of digital divide in general and the Indian scenario in particular and suggests measures to reduce this divide especially the role that can be played by rural libraries towards this end.

Empowering the poor: Information and Communications Technology for governance and poverty reduction - A study of rural development projects in India

2006, UNDP-APDIP

It is widely believed that Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) are effective tools in the fight against poverty, if used appropriately. As India’s poverty is deepening and its ICT industry booming, there are many projects underway that are using ICT to reduce poverty and promote good governance.This publication systematically analyses 18 projects in India that use ICT for the benefit of poor people, and provides recommendations on how ICT can be applied to the massive, widespread and seemingly intractable problems of poverty.

2003, Rahul Nainwal, Rural Litigation and Entitlement Kendra

This Report is a part of a series commissioned by One World Building Digital Opportunities programme which aims "to give decision makers a clear understanding of how civil society is actually using ICT and its impact through a comprehensive study". The present study focuses on the use and impact of ICTs by an NGO working with rural nomadic communities in North India.

May 2, 2007, UNESCO

The state government of Kerala through it's state wide ICT project Akshaya with support from UNESCO is going to create community portals in the local language (Malayalam). The portal will comprise vital information such as government schemes,information regarding agriculture, business ventures,products,local job vacancies, educational details,health information, legal rights and so on.

March 13, 2007, Rajat Guha and Mayur Shekhar Jha, The Economic Times

In India, it will soon be mandatory for states to computerise all land titles and get them audited in the interest of averting property disputes and making property transactions transparent. Non-conformity would mean the deferment of central funding to the state.