ICT for Development in Rural India

Can ICT Drive Development in Rural India
Through the Private and For-Profit Model
of ICT-Enabled Kiosks?
Case Studies of ITC e-Choupal, n-Logue and Drishtee
Sébastien Bianchi
Master in Information Systems
HEC Lausanne
Professor: Alessandro Villa
Expert: Christine Lutringer-Gully
Lausanne, academic year 2014 – 2015
This work is jointly carried out under the Master in Information Systems at HEC Lausanne and the
Minor in Area and Cultural Studies at EPFL.

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank all the people who supported me in the completion of this
final Master thesis. First and foremost, I am grateful to my supervisor, Professor
Alessandro Villa from HEC Lausanne, and to my expert, Professor Christine
Lutringer-Gully from EPFL; they have been source of support and guidance.
Moreover, this Master thesis would not have been complete without the
contribution of different personalities I interviewed from December 2014 to
January 2015: Sarat Chandra, Anshuman Bahadur Saxena, K. M. Baharul Islam,
Maitrayee Mukerji, Rajendra Kumar, Jai Asundi, Satyan Mishra and Tim
Unwin. Furthermore, it is a real pleasure to acknowledge Tania Balderas for her
contribution to the reading and correcting of my English, as I am not a native
English speaker/writer. Finally, I really appreciated the support of my sister,
Caroline Bianchi, and my flatmate, Verena Spierer, for proof reading my work
and for their insightful commentary.

Abstract
This academic thesis takes into consideration the case of India which represents
a developing country that is making a considerable investment in information and
communication technologies (ICTs) for over a decade. This country presents a
significative urban-rural divide related to underpriviledged socio-economic
conditions in rural areas in contrast to the more favorable socio-economic
conditions of urban areas. In fact, rural India counts over 700 millions inhabitants
(around 70% of the population) but generates not more than 20% total GDP. ICT
can be decomposed into four dimensions (4 C’s framework) which serve as shift
levers for bridging digital divide in India: computing, connectivity, content and
capacity (human). Sub-factors of the urban-rural divide affecting the nature of
digital divide can then be identified by observing their relationship with the
sociocultural and socioeconomic situation of rural India: awareness, availability,
accessibility and affordability. There are, however, plenty of ways or models to
strengthen rural livelihoods; the one I chose to examine in this work is the private
and for-profit model of ICT-enabled kiosks as it aims at scaling a business model
into small businesses very quickly, while making them self-sustaining. Through
three case studies, which are ITC e-Choupal (currently still operational), n-Logue
(no longer operational) and Drishtee (still operational but evolved), critical issues
encountered with that model for bridging digital divide and driving socio-
economic development in rural India will be discussed: sustainability and
scalability of the business model, adaptability and affordability of the services
provided, innovation of the infrastructure and the connectivity model, awareness
of the villagers and training and affordability of the village-based entrepreneurs.
There is not a simple answer to the question asked in the title of this thesis;
nonetheless, it is somehow possible to state that no private and for-profit model
based on ICT can survive if it does not effectively consider at least one of the four
sub-factors of the digital divide previously cited.
Keywords: ICT, rural India, digital divide, ICT-D/ICT4D, ICT-enabled kiosks, e-Choupal, n-Logue, Drishtee.

Contents
Acknowledgements ...................................................................................... 1
Abstract ................................................................................................... 2
Figures .................................................................................................... 6
1. Introduction............................................................................................ 1
1.1 Points of interest................................................................................... 2
1.2 Methodology....................................................................................... 3
1.3 Limitations......................................................................................... 4
2. Literature Review...................................................................................... 5
3. ICT in India ...........................................................................................11
3.1 Introduction to Information and Communication Technology (ICT)..........................11
3.2 The 4C’s framework .............................................................................12
3.3 Measuring ICT ...................................................................................13
3.4 Context of India ..................................................................................17
3.4.1 The country: some statistics.................................................................17
3.4.2 Urban-rural divide...........................................................................19
3.4.3 Other divides: castes, gender and states ....................................................23
3.4.4 The resulting digital divide .................................................................28
4. Bridging digital divide and driving development ...................................................36
4.1 How to bridge digital divide?....................................................................38
4.1.1 Computing ...................................................................................38
4.1.2 Connectivity .................................................................................39
4.1.3 Content.......................................................................................39
4.1.4 Capacity......................................................................................40
4.1.5 ICT policy....................................................................................40
4.2 ICT for Development (ICT4D) vs. ICT and Development (ICT-D)...........................43
4.2.1 ICT4D........................................................................................43
4.2.2 ICT-D ........................................................................................45
5. The private and for-profit ICT-enabled kiosks......................................................46
5.1 Definition of ICT-enabled kiosks................................................................46
5.2 ICT-enabled kiosks: emergence and evolution of the movement..............................47

5.3 ICT-enabled kiosks: the movement in India ....................................................50
5.4 Separations at the “Bottom of the Pyramid” ....................................................52
5.5 The private model ................................................................................57
5.5.1 The corporate model ........................................................................58
5.5.2 The franchise model.........................................................................58
5.6 Typology of services .............................................................................59
5.6.1 Agriculture...................................................................................60
5.6.2 Education ....................................................................................64
5.6.3 Healthcare....................................................................................65
5.6.4 E-government services ......................................................................68
5.6.5 Financial and utility services................................................................69
6. Introduction to the case studies ......................................................................70
6.1 Source of data ....................................................................................70
6.1.1 Secondary data...............................................................................70
6.1.2 Primary data .................................................................................73
6.2 SWOT analysis ...................................................................................73
6.3 Methodology......................................................................................74
7. Case study 1: ITC e-Choupal ........................................................................75
7.1 Context of implementation.......................................................................75
7.2 Business Model...................................................................................77
7.3 Rural empowerment..............................................................................83
7.3.1 Achievements................................................................................83
7.3.2 Critical issues ................................................................................92
7.3.3 SWOT........................................................................................95
8. Case study 2: n-Logue................................................................................96
8.1 Context of implementation.......................................................................96
8.2 Business Model...................................................................................99
8.3 Rural empowerment............................................................................105
8.3.1 Achievements..............................................................................105
8.3.2 Critical issues ..............................................................................112
8.3.3 SWOT......................................................................................118
9. Case study 3: Drishtee..............................................................................119

9.1 Context of implementation.....................................................................119
9.2 Business Model.................................................................................121
9.3 Rural empowerment............................................................................128
9.3.1 Achievements..............................................................................128
9.3.2 Critical issues ..............................................................................131
9.3.3 SWOT (on the telecentre-based model of Drishtee).....................................136
10. Discussion .........................................................................................137
10.1 Digital divide..................................................................................137
10.2 Socio-cultural and socio-economic empowerment..........................................139
10.3 Scalability .....................................................................................142
10.4 Sustainability..................................................................................143
10.4.1 Financial sustainability ..................................................................144
10.4.2 Value propositions .......................................................................146
10.4.3 Partnerships and regulation..............................................................148
10.4.4 Technical capacity .......................................................................150
10.4.5 Kiosk entrepreneur capacity.............................................................151
10.4.6 Awareness, capacity and affordability of the BOP .....................................152
11. Conclusion.........................................................................................154
12. References .........................................................................................158
12.1 Works..........................................................................................158
12.2 Websites .......................................................................................170
13. Appendix ..........................................................................................173
13.1 IDI (2007 and 2002) ..........................................................................173
13.2 IDI access sub-index (2007 and 2002).......................................................174
13.3 IDI skills sub-index (2007 and 2002) ........................................................175
13.4 ICT Price Basket 2008........................................................................176
13.5 Statistics of states of India: Population, Area, Rate of literacy (2011) .....................177
13.6 Statistics of states of India: Area, Rate of literacy and IMR (2011)........................178
13.7 Statistics of states of India: Area, Rate of literacy, ICT appliances (2011) ................179
13.8 How ICTs can help achieve MDG?..........................................................180
13.9 Separations at the “Bottom of the Pyramid”.................................................181
13.10 Examples of ICT applications in rural contexts............................................182

13.11 Research Study 2: regressions and graphs .................................................183
13.12 Interviewing guide: Frequently asked questions ...........................................186
13.13 Biographies of the interviewees ............................................................187
Figures
Figure 1 - Networked Readiness Index (WEF, 2014)..................................................................... 14
Figure 2 - Digital Opportunity Index (ITU, 2006).......................................................................... 14
Figure 3 - 2007 ICT Opportunity Index: sub-indices and indicators (ITU, 2007) ........................... 15
Figure 4 - IDI and ICT Price Basket comparison (ITU, 2009)........................................................ 15
Figure 5 - Top ten economies - broadband Internet sub-basket (2008) (ITU, 2009) ....................... 15
Figure 6 - ICT Development Index - Weighting of indicators (ITU, 2009) .................................... 16
Figure 7 - Three stages in the evolution towards an information society (ITU, 2009)..................... 16
Figure 8 - Evolution of the digital divide between IDI groups, 2002-2007 (ITU, 2007) ................. 16
Figure 9 - IDI sub-indices by level of development (2002-2007) (ITU, 2007)................................ 16
Figure 10 - Some statistics about India, 2000-2012 (World Bank, 2014) ....................................... 17
Figure 11 - Human Development Index (HDI) (HDR, 2011)......................................................... 18
Figure 12 – Urban/Rural population, 1951-2011 (World Bank, 2014) ........................................... 19
Figure 13 -Average IMR between rural and urban areas, 1995, 2005 and 2013 (author) ................ 21
Figure 14 - Under five and infant mortality indicators, 2005 (Government of India, 2006) ........... 22
Figure 15 - World Development Indicators (World Bank, 2014) ................................................... 22
Figure 16 - Agriculture, Industry and Services in India, 2000-2013 (World Bank, 2014)............... 23
Figure 17 - Literacy rate, gender, 2001-2006 (World Bank, 2014)................................................. 25
Figure 18 - Level of S&T, 2004-2005 (Bhattacharya and Graham, 2008) ...................................... 26
Figure 19 - Household ownership of selected goods and services, 2004-2005................................ 27
Figure 20 - Universal acces vs. Universal service (Barrett and Slavova, 2011) .............................. 30
Figure 21 - Access to services, appliances and infrastructure (Barrett and Slavova, 2011) ............. 31
Figure 22 - Tele-density (rural/urban) 1999-2006 (Bhattacharya and Vickery, 2008)..................... 33
Figure 23 – Rural/urban teledensity (Subramanian and Arivanandan, 2009).................................. 33
Figure 24 - Status of telecom indicators, 2005 (Bhattacharya and Vickery, 2008).......................... 33
Figure 25 - Internet world's content (Techinasia, 2012) ................................................................. 35
Figure 26 - Livelihood assets (Tripathi, Singh and Kumar, 2012).................................................. 37
Figure 27 - From push to pull strategies (ICTlogy, 2008) .............................................................. 42
Figure 28 - The commercial infrastructure at the BOP (Ruohonen and al (eds.), 2012).................. 53
Figure 29 - The World Economic Pyramid (Prahalad and Hart, 2002) ........................................... 54
Figure 30 - Research Propositions (Tarafdar and Singh, 2011, p. 5)............................................... 55
Figure 31 - Telecentre/ICT-enabled kiosks network model (Liyanage, 2009, p. 147)..................... 57
Figure 32 – Telecentre as outreach window (adapted from Liyanage, 2009, p. 147) ...................... 60
Figure 33 - Agriculture and employment in India (WorldBank, 2014) ........................................... 61
Figure 34 - Agricultural extension as part of AKIS/RD (Unwin, 2009, p. 50)................................ 62
Figure 35 - Evolution of information sources to farmers (Mittal, 2012, p. 15)................................ 63
Figure 36 - Economic characteristics of sample states (Kendall and Singh, 2006, p. 9).................. 71
Figure 37 - SWOT Analysis template (Team FME, 2009, p. 6) ..................................................... 73
Figure 38 - The mandi system (OpenIDEO, 2012) ........................................................................ 76
Figure 39 - The e-Choupal system (OpenIDEO, 2012).................................................................. 76

Figure 40 - ITC e-Choupal timeline (Prahalad and Krishnan, 2011, p. 2)....................................... 76
Figure 41 - Profit of farmers and e-Choupal (Admane, 2014, p. 255)............................................. 79
Figure 42 - e-Choupal 2.0 value chain (Seas of Change, 2012, p. 2) .............................................. 80
Figure 43 – e-Choupal 3.0 Business Model (Prahalad and Krishnan, 2011, p. 9) ........................... 81
Figure 44 - e-Choupal Supply Chain (Prahalad and Krishnan, 2011, p. 4) ..................................... 84
Figure 45 - Research Study 1: Comparison of transaction time (Admane, 2014, p. 255) ................ 85
Figure 46 - Research Study 1: Satisfaction with e-Choupal (Admane, 2014, p. 255)...................... 87
Figure 47 - Employment exchanges (adapted from Admane, 2014, p. 254) ................................... 88
Figure 48 - VSAT satellite dish for connectivity (Toyama and al, 2004, p. 7)................................ 91
Figure 49 - SWOT Analysis of ITC e-Choupal (Author, 2014)...................................................... 95
Figure 50 - n-Logue's business model (Jhunjhunwala and al, 2004, p. 33) ................................... 100
Figure 51 - Figure 51 - Operating model of n-Logue (Paul, 2004, p. 8)........................................ 100
Figure 52 - corDECT design (Paul, 2004, p. 7)............................................................................ 101
Figure 53 - the top services of all n-Logue kiosks, 2004 (Paul, 2004, p. 24) ................................ 103
Figure 54 - Kiosk services frequency (Kendall and Singh, 2006, p. 10)....................................... 103
Figure 55 - Highest revenue generating services by State (Kendall and Singh, 2006, p. 27)......... 104
Figure 56 – corDECT vs. Traditional technologies (Howard, Simms and Simanis, 2001, p. 7) .... 106
Figure 57 - n-Logue wireless access tower (Tirumvallur) (Toyama and al, 2004, p. 7) ................ 107
Figure 58 - N-Logue kiosk near Pabal, Maharashtra (Toyama and al, 2004, p. 2) ........................ 108
Figure 59 - Remote eye-care consultation (Jhunjhunwala and al, 2004, p. 36) ............................. 110
Figure 60 – Remote configuration (Dakshinamoorthy and Gordon, 2007, p. 7) ........................... 110
Figure 61 - n-Logue telemedicine model (Dakshinamoorthy and Gordon, 2007, p. 6).................. 110
Figure 62 - Age distribution of kiosk users (Kumar and Best, 2006, p. 6) .................................... 115
Figure 63 - Distribution of religions of kiosk users (Kumar and Best, 2006, p. 7)........................ 115
Figure 64 - SWOT Analysis of n-Logue (Author, 2014).............................................................. 118
Figure 65 - Impact assessment (Drishtee, 2014) .......................................................................... 129
Figure 66 - Factors contributing to telecentre sustainability (Liyanage, 2009, p. 53).................... 144
Figure 67 - Mapping the reasons for non-sustainability (Liyanage, 2009, p. 26) .......................... 144

1
1. Introduction
Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are commonly used nowadays to stress the
role of unified and integrated technical means that provide users with information they can access
to, share and store according to their preferences and needs. As ICTs provide a large spectrum of
tools that have been widely acknowledged as important resources for the socio-economic
development of developing countries all over the globe, it can be more specific to consider the
impact ICT can have on rural development of developing countries.
The case of India is paticularly appropriate since it allows us to closely analyse the relationships
between ICT and the different socio-economic and socio-cultural aspects, especially due to the
existing divides in India - urban-rural divide, caste divide, gender divide, state divide, etc. - which
in turn, have a direct effect on the digital divide.
Supported by ICT policies from the Indian Government and from States of India as well, ICT-
enabed kiosks emerged in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s as an ICT for development (ICT4D)
mainstream and enabler for bridging the digital divide in the rural areas. These kiosks were either
operated by the public sector (through e-governance initiatives) or they resulted from private sector
initiatives, sometimes in partnership with the public sector as well (public-private partnerships).
Driven by the private sector, the private (either franchise- or corrporate-led) and for-profit model of
ICT-enabled kiosks has been massively implemented and scaled through rural India during the
2000’s. Even with the fast expansion of mobile telephony and related applications in today’s rural
India, I find valuable to ask the following question in order to analyse the progess, shortcomings
and other critical issues encountered through the franchise and for-profit model of ICT-enabled
kiosks:
“Can ICT drive development in rural India through the
private and for-profit model of ICT-enabled kiosks?”

2
1.1 Points of interest
In this work, the impact of ICT4D on rural India is explored, with a special focus on the franchise
and for-profit model in rural India. Why? I asked myself whether it was possible to succeed in
launching profitable ICT-enabled kiosks for the Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP) in rural India in
order to consequently bridge the existing digital divide between urban and rural areas (urban-rural
divide) and propel socio-economic development in spite of the significant lack of infrastructure and
efficient institutions. In addition, I will delineate the effectiveness of information and
communication services through the ICTs ability to answer the needs of rural Indian communities in
the areas of agriculture, education, health, e-governance, banking and utility services. Moreover, the
role and the evolution over time of the ICT policy in India provide feedbacks on the importance
institutions play for ICT4D in India.
However, it is absolutely necessary to keep a holistic approach in order to understand the
underlying factors which could influence the impact of ICT4D in rural India. Therefore, it is of
upmost importance to consider the socio-cultural and economic divides existing in India,
particularly the urban-rural divide, which in turn can engender digital divide throughout the
country.
As my main focus remains on ICT4D in rural India, I study three cases, ITC e-Choupal, n-Logue
and Drishtee, which permit me to illustrate by their own context of implementation and business
model, the way they operated ICT-enabled kiosks and the success or failure they encountered in
accordance to the strategy followed.
A discussion platform takes place where I gather my main observations regarding the achievements
and the critical issues of the private and for-profit model in bridging digital divide and driving
development. Examples based on the case studies illustrate and complement the discussion
platform. The last point of interest consists in making further considerations, so that I can take into
account in that section how the franchise and for-profit model is currently functioning and the
various paths followed by ICT in order to drive development in rural India.

3
1.2 Methodology
In the very beginning, I contextualize ICT in rural India: valuable statistics are gathered in order to
better contextualize the urban-rural divide. Using a framework (awareness, availability,
accessibility, affordability), the idea is to first identify the resulting digital divide to better
understand how the digital divide is engendered in this country. For this purpose, I use the 4C’s
framework in order to assess how ICT can effectively outline the shift levers available for bridging
digital divide. The ICT-D and ICT4D discourses are then juxtaposed, ensuing in the description of
the private and for-profit models of ICT-enabled kiosks in the following section.
As previously mentioned, I practically make use of three case studies on the franchise and for-profit
model for development in rural India. The first project, ITC e-Choupal, is still currently operating,
with a focus in the middle of India. The second project, n-Logue, is no longer operational and
focused on the South and West of India. And finally, the third project, Drishtee, is still operational
today but strategically changed, with a focus on the North and the East regions. Throughout the
three case studies I explore, I use a same framework, the SWOT business analysis technique, in
order to compare and contrast their capacity for sustainable development.
Finally, based on a secondary and primary data research, I conclude by mitigating the success rate
of ICT-enabled kiosks in driving rural India forward depending on the challenges encountered,
which are explained one by one in a discussion platform. The primary research was done through
interviews (face-to-face, skype and e-mail); this allowed me to pose questions and obtain valuable
feedback on observations resulting from the analysis of secondary sources.

4
1.3 Limitations
In this work, I decide to focus on the franchise and profit model of ICT-enabled kiosks. Therefore, I
excluded from my research e-governance initiatives or other ICT initiatives such as ICT public-
private partnerships. Moreover, I specifically studied the socio-economic impact ICT-enabled
kiosks may have on rural development and empowerment by taking into account the resulting
digital divide from the urban-rural dichotomy of India. No primary research study on the ground has
been conducted due to time and location reasons. Furthermore, an important limitation in this work
related to the literature review I have been able to gather, is the time interval of analysis related to
the early phase of the telecenters’ movement from 2000 to 2010. Therefore, even though the critical
issues I raise in the end of this work are relevant to the private and for-profit models of the ICT-
enabled kiosks, technology is constantly evolving and certain issues regarding cost of technology,
connectivity and content can be more easily overcome nowadays. Finally, it is important to
underline once more that I have limited my research to the ICT-enabled kiosks in accordance to my
primary and secondary research data, as well as my own perspective; this seems to remain the best
approach to address low-socioeconomic, large, underserved or even communities that are yet to
obtain the services being made available through e-government to e-education in one shared-access
facilities. Providing “many” with “few” remains necessary in rural India. It is part of what the
Indian call Jugaad (frugal innovation).

5
2. Literature Review
Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are commonly defined over the globe as
electronic, digital or technical means that provide users with information they can access, share and
store according to their preferences and needs (UNDP, 2001; Michiels and Van Crowder, 2001;
Chapman and Slaymaker, 2002; Heeks, 2002; Kramer, Jenkins and Katz, 2007; FOLDOC, 2008;
Unwin, 2009; ITU, 2012; TechTarget, 2014). Statistics can be used in order to measure the
information society looks like pertinent in order to situate the level of advancement of a country; in
other words, effectively determining whether it is developed or developing (ITU, 2007; ITU, 2009;
United Nations, 2009; ITU, 2013; WEF, 2014; WorldBank, 2014).
Kramer, Jenkins and Katz (2007) underlined the role of the ICT sector in expanding economic
opportunity. ICT is built on the basis of 4 dimensions which form the 4C’s framework (Bracey and
Culver, 2005; Tongia, 2006; Makitla and al, 2010): computing, communication, content and
capacity. Kling (1999) argues that Internet use is not only related to technological access
(computing, communication and content), but also related to social skills (human capacity). Heeks
mentions that the economic, social and political life of the 21st century will be mostly dominated by
the digital world and will subsequently exclude people without ICT access (Heeks, 2008, p. 26,
cited by Makitla and al, 2010).
The situation of India is depicted by most of the authors and organizations of the literature review
who work on the topic of ICT in rural India. Most of them underline the important economic growth
in the country for over two decades with its export-oriented software and ICT-based services sector.
Nonetheless, they remark the fact that India still stands far behind on the human development index
(Census of India, 2001; Baskaran and Muchie, 2006; HDR, 2008; Subramanian and Arivanandan,
2009; Walsham, 2010; Census of India, 2011; Sreekumar, 2011; Mukerji, 2013; HDR, 2014;
UNDP, 2014; WorldBank, 2014). It is essentially the socio-economic nature of the significant
differences between urban and rural areas in India (urban-rural divide) that raises interest for
understanding the impact ICT could bring in rural India through the private and for-profit models;
in concrete terms, this would provide underprivileged populations with access to information and
drive development of their own communities.

6
The Oxford dictionary (Oxford University Press 1989) define the word ‘urban’ as “relating to a city
or town” and the word ‘rural’ as “relating to the countryside rather than the town”. In the “United
Nations (UN) World Urbanization Prospects (WUP), The 2014 revision” (UN 2014) it is claimed
that “national statistical offices are in the best position to establish the most appropriate criteria to
characterize urban areas in their respective countries” and ‘rural population’ is associated to the
“difference between the total population and the urban population” and “refers to people living in
rural areas”. Based on the WUP, the World Bank (2014) mentions “urban population […] is
calculated using World Bank population estimates and urban ratios from the United Nations World
Urbanization Prospects” and “rural population […] is calculated as the difference between total
population and urban population.” Viktoria Hnatkovskaa and Amartya Lahiri (2013) described the
urban-rural divide by taking into account and studying between 1983 and 2010 four points they
considered relevant to understand the differences between urban and rural areas: the education
attainments levels, the occupation choices, the wages and the consumption expenditure of Indian
workers. Sneh Sangwan and Randhir Singh Sangwan (2003) focused their attention on the fact we
live in societies in transition with changing spatial pattern of social variables which can be assessed
through the evolution of the rural and urban society in India over time (Census of India 2001;
Government of India, 2006; Census of India 2011; Chandramouli, 2011; Government of India,
2013; WorldBank, 2014).
Chrisanthi Avgerou (2008) explained how emerging countries have attempted to get benefits from
ICT usage. She identified three discourses on IS implementation in developing countries (ISDC):
the transfer and diffusion discourse, the socially embeddedness discourse action and the
transformative discourse. Tripathi, Singh and Kumar (2012) depicted the impacts of ICT on
livelihood assets by categorizing them as human, natural, financial, social and physical assets. The
link between ICT growth and economic growth is explored by Maximo Torero, research fellow at
IFPRI, and Joachim von Braun, director general of IFPRI, who wrote a brief (2006) in order to
understand whether and how ICT could play a role in providing pro-poor services and fostering
their development even if many prerequisite must to be put in place. More precisely, Robert
Chapman and Tom Slaymaker (2002) investigated the potential role of ICT in rural development by
highlighting the constraints and opportunities faced to their application. In We the Peoples: A Un
for the Twenty-First Century (2000), the Former United Nations General-Secretary Kofi A. Annan

7
argues and confirms: “The information technology sector, in short, can transform many if not most
other sectors of economic and social activity” (p. 34).
The trend and pattern of growth of the ICT industry in India, such as the e-governance situation and
the teledensity variation across various Indian states, is more carefully analyzed by Varma and
Sasikumar (2004) who explain that “many studies have confirmed the positive pay offs of IT in
enhancing growth and development” (p.22), but that the “major impediment for ICT diffusion [in
India] is the lack of sufficient infrastructure” (p.32). Kurukshetra (Vol. 60, January 2012), a journal
on rural development, investigates the role of ICT in rural development of India through the
contribution of several authors: Gulati, Hazra, Kameswari, Sanyal and Raheem. Chitla (2012) as
well as Kumar and Singh (2012) wrote a paper to point out how ICT initiatives are capable of
development in rural India. More specifically, Makitla, Herselman, Botha and Van Greunen (2010)
published a paper on the mechanisms that facilitate delivery of digital content and services to
resource constrained communities through any access-technologies and devices available to the
end-users.
However, the key of success for ICT4D in rural India is to succeed first in bridging the digital
divide (Wade, 2002; Baskaran and Muchie as editors, 2006; TechTarget, 2014), which can be
structured into 4 levers (Bracey and Culver 2005; Tongia 2006; Makitla and al, 2010): awareness,
availability, access and affordability. Rao (2005) explained the digital divide arising from the use of
ICTs that occurs in India by discussing different aspects of Indian infrastructures such as electric
networks, IT, internet penetration and teledensity. He enlightened that the urban-rural divide could
partially explain the digital divide. However, he also pointed out that some Indian states are more
digital than others and there are caste, gender, educated–uneducated and rich–poor divides that
could also justify the “national digital divide“. The relationship between the digital divide and the
urban-rural divide is also considered by Mathews (2001) who showed in urban areas there is a
heavy concentration of ICTs, while in rural areas people cruelly lack access to ICTs which give rise
to development issues. More specifically, the internet’s impact on India, the challenges for building
a stronger internet ecosystem and the actions required to bridge critical gaps in the Internet
ecosystem were discussed in the report written by McKinsey & Company, Inc. (2012). Tongia,
Subrahmanian and Arunachalam (2005) also looked at the features of digital divide, the challenges
encountered in bridging it and the role ICT can play at answering Millenium Development Goals

8
and Targets from the Millennium Declaration signed by 189 countries (2000) for providing rural
development and bridging digital divide. In that sense, the World Telecommunication/ICT
Development Report (2010) from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) showed how
ICT can help achieve MDGs and the report prepared by Gilhooly (2002) for the United Nations ICT
Task Force in Support of the Science, Technology & Innovation Task Force of the United Nations
Millennium Project complements the literature on sustainable human development and poverty
eradication thanks to ICT.
The private and for-profit model (Kendall and Singh, 2006; Singh, 2006; Ariyabandu, 2009; World
Bank, 2009; Mukerji, 2013) is one of the platforms for ICT-enabled kiosks (also called
multipurpose telecentres or more commonly telecentres) in rural India. ICT-enabled kiosks are
share-access facilities providing services for low-income and socially disadvantaged communities
for strengthening their local development (Fillip and Foote, 2007; Ariyabandu, 2009; Liyanage,
2009; Mukerji; 2008; Mukerji, 2009; Unwin, 2009; Mukerji, 2013). These communities are more
commonly called the “Bottom of the Pyramid” (Prahalad and Hart, 2002 ; Kuriyan, Ray and
Toyama, 2008; Tarafdar and Singh, 2011) where there are market separations which can be mediate
by ICT through three actions: Automate, Informate and Transformate (Tarafdar and Singh, 2011).
ICT help in providing number of services which can empower rural areas. The typology of services
can be done through two types of categorization: type of operations and type of needs.
There are basically three main types of operations ICT can execute (Dossani, Misra and Jhaveri,
2004): informational services, transactional services and e-governance services. The other
subcategorization can be done by focusing on the needs ICT fulfils. Here below, several sections
dedicate to all of those areas which concern the needs and requirements in rural India with the
literature review associated:
1. Agriculture (Meera, Jhamtani and Rao, 2004; Prasad, 2005; Rivera, Qamar and
Mwandemere, 2005; Unwin, 2009; Qaisar, Ali khan, Mohd and Alam, 2011; Glendenning
and Ficarelli, 2012; Mittal, 2012, Kumar and Sankarakumar, 2012; Admane, 2014);
2. Education (IBM, 2005; Singh, 2006; Devi, Rizwaan and Chander, 2012; Roy, 2012; Von
Lautz-Cauzanet, 2012);

9
3. Healthcare (Prasad, 2004; Bagchi, 2006; Murthy, 2008; Bhaskaranarayana, Satyamurthy,
Remilla, Sethuraman and Rayappa, 2009; Tiwari, 2010; Mishra, Singh and Chand, 2012;
Ghia, Patil, Ved and Jha, 2013);
4. E-government services (Rao, 2004; Toyama, K., Kiri, K., Ratan, M. L., Nileshwar, A.,
Vedashree, R., and MacGregor, 2004; Malhotra, Chariar, Das and Ilavarasan, 2007;
Mukerji, 2008; Unwin, 2009; Upadhyaya and Chugan, 2012; Kumar and Kumar, 2013);
5. Financial and utility services (Paul, 2004; Toyama and al, 2004; Singh, 2006; Satchidananda
and Khanolkar, 2007; Ariyabandu; 2009; Mukerji, 2013;).
Findings of the case studies and the following discussion platform attempt to substantiate whether
or not the private and for-profit model can effectively drive development in rural India. The SWOT
analysis technique (Pahl and Richter, 2009; Team FME, 2013) is used to depict the strengths,
weaknesses, opportunities and threats of each of the three cases introduced, described and discussed
with help of secondary sources (see below) and primary sources (Baharul Islam, Maitrayee Mukerji,
Rajendra Kumar, Jai Asundi, Satyan Mishra and Tim Unwin, all of them interviewed in 2014):
1. ITC e-Choupal (Annamalai and Rao, 2003; Bhatnagar, Dewan, Torres and Kanungo, 2003;
Chand, 2006; Singh and Khatri (eds.), 2008; Dangi and Singh, 2010; Walsham, 2010;
Prahalad and Krishnan, 2011; The DeSai Group, 2011; Tarafdar and Singh, 2011; Seas of
Change, 2012; Admane, 2014; Pant and Negi, 2014);
2. n-Logue (Howard, Simms and Simanis, 2001; Jhunjhunwala, Ramachandran, and
Bandyopadhyay, 2004; Paul, 2004; Toyama, Kiri, Menon, Pal, Sethi and Srinivasan, 2005;
Gurumurthy, Singh and Kasinathan, 2005; Best and Kumar, 2006; Kendall and Singh, 2006;
Dakshinamoorthy and Gordon, 2007; Ramachander, 2007; Steyn, 2010; Sreekumar, 2011)
3. Drishtee (Delgado, Eagle, Hasson and Sinha, 2002; Bhatnager, Dewan, Moreno Torres and
Kanungo; 2003; Toyama, Kiri, Menon, Pal, Sethi and Srinivasan, 2005; Parminder and
Deepika, 2008; Telecom LIVE, 2009; Mukerji, 2013; Drishtee.com, 2014).
Microsoft showed findings through a review of research on pc kiosks (2007) based on existing
literature review (Heeks, 2003; Keniston 2002; Toyama and al., 2005) and Toyama, Kiri, Menon,
Pal, Sethi and Srinivasan made observations based on quantitative results on rural pc kiosks in India
by taking into consideration n-Logue and Drishtee (2005). Sey and Fellows (2009) more especially
depicted the literature review on the impact of public access to ICT based on four types of

10
indicators (venue performance and sustainability, users, usage patterns and downstream impacts)
even though they concluded to limited and elusive evidence on downstream impacts of ICT on
development. Furthermore, Masiero (2011) discussed the relationship between the two underlying
dimensions of ICT-enabled kiosks: social and financial. Kuriyan, Ray and Toyama (2008)
enlightened the importance of private-public partnerships in order to address the “Bottom of the
Pyramid” by taking into account social and commercial goals at the same time.
Certainly, it is good to raise issues and challenges, but it is better to propose possible solutions.
Several authors and organizations made recommendations (Harris, Kumar and Balaji, 2003;
Badshah, Khan and Garrido, 2005; Garai and Shadrach, 2006; Kendall and Singh, 2006; Singh,
2006; Tongia and Subrahmanian, 2006; Fillip and Foote, 2007; Ariyabandu, 2009; Liyanage, 2009;
Singh (editor), 2009; Unwin, 2009; Sreekumar, 2011; WBCSD, 2012; Mukerji, 2013).

11
3. ICT in India
3.1 Introduction to Information and Communication Technology (ICT)
ICT is the means, either as softwarei
or hardwareii
technology, for “creating, storing, processing,
disseminating and exchanging information” (Heeks, 2002; UNDP, 2001, cited by Mukerji, 2013).
The online TechTarget defines the different types of technologies ICT concerns, claiming that it
“[…] is an umbrella term that includes any communication device or application, encompassing:
radio, television, cellular phones, computer and network hardware and software, satellite systems
and so on, as well as the various services and applications associated with them, such as
videoconferencing and distance learning”. Tim Unwin (2009, p. 77) also adds, by citing Weigel and
Walburger (2004, p. 19), ICT is a used terminology to refer “to technologies to access, process and
transmit information […]”. These technologies can be separated into areas which are telephony,
broadcast media, and audio-visual processing and transmission systems (FOLDOC, 2008).
Michiels and Van Crowder (2001) defined ICTs “as a range of electronic technologies which when
converged in new configurations are flexible, adaptable, enabling and capable of transforming
organizations and redefining social relations”. They also mentioned the existing “convergence
between the new technologies and conventional media” (Michiels and Van Crowder, 2001, p. 8) so
that the new digital technologies can share and exchange information on different devices and
multiple media (cited by Chapman and Slaymaker, 2002, p. 1) thanks to the emergence of the
World Wide Web and the development and democratization of the digital technologies (Labelle,
2003, p. 1).
With the emergence of the internet and the related digitization of information towards the later part
of the 1980’s, the term ICT was first used by academics and researchers, increasing in popularity
with applications by modifying and mediating the relationship between men and machines. The ICT
revolution was launched, where Consumers-to-Consumers (C2C), Business-to-Consumers (B2C),
Government-to-Business (G2B), Business-to-Government (B2G), Business-to-Partners (B2P),
Partners-to-Business (P2B), Business-to-Enterprise (B2E), Government-to-Citizen (G2C) and
Citizen-to-Government (C2G) relationships are therefore facilitated (Baffour Kojo and Lu, 2003;

12
Malhotra, Chariar, Das and Ilavarasan, 2007; Mukerji, 2008; Schware, 2009; Chitla, 2012;
McKinsey & Company, Inc., 2012). Nowadays, ICTs are pervasive by nature and resulting
applications emerge in different organizations and processes progressively “leading to reduction of
processing time, lower transaction costs, lower inventory costs and less material” (Mody and
Dahlman, 1992, cited by Maitrayee Mukerji, 2013). It has become a pillar of the modern knowledge
society as ICT connects people together and provides e-services relying on improving the
information transfer (Kramer, Jenkins and Katz, 2007).
Furthermore, ICT can also been considered in terms of opportunities to ‘leapfrog’ technology
emerging and poor countries left behind use, in order to drive development and ‘catch-up’ the
developed countries (Mukerji, 2013). In this particular case, the term ‘ICT for Development’
(ICT4D) is more appropriately used. In that sense, many initiatives, notably the Global Knowledge
Initiative (founded in 1997), the UN ICT Task Force (established in 2000), the DOT-Force
(launched in 2000) and the World Summit on the Information Society (hosted by the International
Telecommunication Union in 2003 and 2005), have actively built “[…] partnerships between civil
society, the public and the private sectors to harness ICTs for development” (Chapman, Slaymaker
and Young, 2003, cited by Grimshaw and Kala (eds.), 2011, p. 2).
3.2 The 4C’s framework
ICTs can be studied and evaluated on the basis of a 4C’s framework (Bracey and Culver, 2005;
Tongia, Subrahmanian and Arunachalam, 2005):
1. Computing: Computers are expensive to acquire; this implies that shared access like
cybercafes or ICT-enabled kiosks, and mobile technology such mobile phones can be good
financial alternatives, especially in developing and emerging countries.
2. Connectivity: The mobile telephony and internet are increasingly used and available
everywhere over the globe, even if network coverage is, for the most part, limited to urban
areas and the data connectivity remains poor and expensive.
3. Content: Content does not exist in every language and information systems that provide
exhaustive content require multimedia which require broadband connectivity.

13
4. Capacity: Capacity refers to the ability for people to understand, use and maintain ICTs.
According to Kling (1999), they are user skills, in other words, skills that are related to
“professional knowledge, economic resources and technical use”. Governments play here an
important role by promoting ICT to people: children can already be educated to use them at
school.
Hardware or computing is becoming increasingly affordable and its price-performance ratio is also
quickly improving. Nonetheless, other aspects such as communication access and software use
prevent ICTs from becoming more cost effective and readily available to all populations. ICTs can
be a driver of performance and development as they facilitate the information access that provides
knowledge to users. For these reasons, investments in ICTs must absolutely be considered for
emerging and developing countries in order to build a Knowledge Economy, as it is obviously the
case in India for more than a decade now (Rao, 2005, p. 366). The economic, social and political
life in the 21st century will be mostly dominated by the digital world and will subsequently exclude
people without ICT access according to Heeks (2008, p. 26). Hence, Heeks (2008) and Unwin
(2009); these authors express the need to invest in ICTs by taking into account and innovating in
each aspect of the above-mentioned 4C’s framework, in order to deliver ICT access widely and
without exception.
3.3 Measuring ICT
ICT needs to be measured, in order to evaluate the situation of a community or a region regarding
their access to ICT and compare it with others. However, there are far too much data about ICT and
it is very difficult but necessary to find standardized data in order to make comparisons on same
scale. ICT-related and weighted sub-metrics are often used for measuring ICT, but very often they
are not applicable due to lack of data. Several initiatives can be referenced for measuring ICT as
follows (United Nations, 2009; ITU, 2014).

14
1. The World Economic Forum’s Networked Readiness Index1
(NRI): The NRI measures, on a
scale from 1 (worst) to 7 (best), the performance of 148 economies in leveraging information and
communications technologies to boost competitiveness and well-being (WEF, 2014; GITRiii
, 2014)
2. The ITU Digital Opportunity Index: The ITU-DOIiv
is an e-index based on internationally-
agreed ICT indicators. This makes it a valuable tool for benchmarking the most important
indicators for measuring the Information Society. The Digital Opportunity Index (DOI) is based on
11 ICT indicators, grouped in 3 clusters: opportunity, infrastructure and utilization.
3. The ITU’s 2007 ICT Opportunity Index: The ICT-OI is an inclusive index and provides
measurement across 183 economies, relies on ten indicators that help measure ICT networks,
education and skills, uptake and intensity of the use of ICT (Figure 1). For analytical purposes,
economies are grouped into four categories, ranging from high to low ICT Opportunities. Apart
from cross-country comparisons, the index’s methodology highlights relative movements between
2001-2005. A comparison of annual average growth rates shows which countries are making
progress and how fast. (ITU, 2007)
1
India is ranked 83
d
in 2014.
Figure 1 - Networked Readiness Index (WEF, 2014)
Figure 2 - ICT Opportunity Index (ITU, 2007)

15
4. The ICT Price Basket (IPB): The IPB combines fixed, mobile and broadband tariffs for 2008
into one measure and compares it across countries. (ITU, 2009)
5. The ICT Development Index (IDI) – formerly the ITU-OI: The IDI captures the level of
advancement of ICTs in more than 150 countries worldwide and compares progress made between
2002 and 2007. It also measures the global digital divide and examines how it has developed in
recent years (ITU, 2009).
I chose to focus a little more on the last Index, the ICT Development Index (IDI), and decompose it
in the case of India, for comparison with the rest of the world. You can find all the results from ITU
(2009) in the appendix of this work. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) introduced
the ICT Development Index (IDI) “[…] as an indicator of countries’ level of ICT development”,
more especially to “measure the digital divide between countries and assess countries’ ICT
Figure 3 - 2007 ICT Opportunity Index: sub-indices and indicators (ITU, 2007)
Figure 4 - IDI and ICT Price Basket
comparison (ITU, 2009)
Figure 5 - Top ten economies - broadband
Internet sub-basket (2008) (ITU, 2009)

16
development potential” (ITU, 2009; Barrett and Slavova, 2011, p. 18). The IDI considers several
indicators to measure the access to ICT and establish the index: 1. ICT readiness; 2. fixed
telephony; 3. mobile telephony; 4. international Internet bandwidth; 5. households with computers;
6. households with Internet. Developing countries have considerably improved the value of their
index this last decade compared the developed countries, largely owing to the huge success of
mobile telecommunications in developing countries (ITU, 2009; Barrett and Slavova, 2011, p. 18).
India did not really enhance its situation regarding the ICT Development Index (IDI): 118th in
2007, while in 2002, it was just one rank less. As we can see in the appendix, India has however
improved on the access sub-index (especially resulted from the significant mobile cellular
penetration from 1 to 20 per cent). Nevertheless, the country still encountered issues to improve the
bandwidth per Internet user, certainly due to the continued growth of the Indian population which
may in some ways mitigate the connectivity networks improvements. Similarly, there are low home
computer and Internet penetration rates. Finally, India has been better on all sub-indicators
regarding the skills sub-index (ITU, 2009, p. 28).
Figure 9 - IDI sub-indices by level of
development (2002-2007) (ITU, 2007)
Figure 8 - Evolution of the digital
divide between IDI groups, 2002-
2007 (ITU, 2007)
Figure 7 - Three stages in the
evolution towards an information
society (ITU, 2009)
Figure 6 - ICT Development Index -
Weighting of indicators (ITU, 2009)

17
Year 2000 2003 2006 2009 2012
GNI per capita, PPP (current international $) 2'040.0 2'420.0 3'260.0 4'100.0 5'080.0
Population, total 1'042'261'758.0 1'093'786'762.0 1'143'289'350.0 1'190'138'069.0 1'236'686'732.0
GDP (current US$) 476'609'148'165.2 618'356'467'437.0 949'116'769'619.6 1'365'372'433'341.3 1'858'744'737'180.5
GDP growth (annual %) 3.8 7.9 9.3 8.5 4.7
Life expectancy at birth, total (years) 62.2 63.3 64.5 65.4 66.2
Agriculture, value added (% of GDP) 23.0 20.7 18.3 17.7 17.5
Industry, value added (% of GDP) 26.0 26.0 28.8 27.8 26.2
Services, etc., value added (% of GDP) 51.0 53.2 52.9 54.5 56.3
3.4 Context of India
Before introducing ICT in India, it is first important and relevant to take into the political, the socio-
economic, the socio-cultural and the demographic context of India account, more especially the
features that play an important role in the way ICT can be used, accessed and afforded. In that
sense, I dedicate the following subsections to the discussion of the significant rural-urban divide of
India and about its caste, gender and state divides as well. The ICT situation and the resulting
digital divide in India are then investigated. Finally, we examine the evolution over time of the ICT
policy in India.
3.4.1 The country: some statistics
India is the second most populous country in the world with over 1.267 billion people in 2014.
About 45% of the population is less than 24 years old; the median age is 27 years old in 2014.2
The
Indian economy is the world’s tenth-largest by nominal GDP with 1,877 trillion US$v
in 2013 and
the world’s third-largest by PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) with 6,777 trillion US$vi
in 2013.
However, the GDP per capita was only 1,499 US$vii
in 2013, so that the income level is considered
by the World Bank as lower-middle.
The country is divided into 29 States3
and 7 Union Territories. The population is multicultural,
multi-religious (mainly Hinduism at 80.5% and Islam at 13.4%)4
and multilingual (18 languages
officially recognized by the Government and 844 dialects)5
.
2
http://www.indexmundi.com/india/demographics_profile.html
3
Andhra Pradesh was divided into two states, Telangana and a residual Andhra Pradesh on 2 June 2014
4
http://censusindia.gov.in/%28S%28dcgcku55jsqwk5aayrhold45%29%29/Census_And_You/religion.aspx
Figure 10 - Some statistics about India, 2000-2012 (World Bank, 2014)

18
India encounters important economic growth since now more than two decades (over 8% per year
in the period 2004-2007)6
with its export-oriented software and ICT-based services sector.
However, even though India is today the world’s fourth largest economy in purchasing power parity
terms (PPP)v
, India was ranked as 128th
out of 177 countries on the human development index,
which is a composite index based on life expectancy, literacy and education levels, and economic
standard of living, in 2005 (HDR, 2007) and 135th
out of 187 countries in 2013 (UNDP, 2014).
Human Development Index (HDI)viii
: “Shocking statistics include the percentage of malnourished
children under 5 being 46%, the adult female literacy rate as only 48%, and the percentage of the
rural population using adequate sanitary services as 18%” (World Bank, 2007, UNICEF, 2004,
cited by Walsham, 2010, pp. 1-2). Inequalities are particularly divided between urban and rural
areas, the urban-rural divide, which will be discussed in the following section.
1980 1990 2000 2005 2008 2010 2011 2012 2013 1980-1990 1990-2000 2000-2013
HDI rank Country
135 India 0.369 0.431 0.483 0.527 0.554 0.570 0.581 0.583 0.586 1.58 1.15 1.49
Human Development Index (HDI) Average annual HDI growth
Value (%)
Medium human development
Figure 11 - Human Development Index (HDI) (HDR, 2011)
India's telecom network has huge potential of development because of its high population (also in
terms of economies of scale for low-cost telecommunications) and the focus on ICT (institutional
focus on that by all types of agencies in India; the government, the state, the private sector, the Civil
Citizen Organizations, etc.). The economic success of India does, however, not benefit everybody in
India. As we above mentioned, there are inequalities related to socio-economic situation, especially
between urban and rural areas, but is just one of the numerous kind of inequalities: gender, castes,
education, state, etc. In that sense, plenty of ICT-enabled initiatives have been implemented
throughout the country since the 2000’s, in order to empower the poorest communities of the
country.
5
Fillip and Foot, 2007, p. 171
6
World Bank, 2007

19
3.4.2 Urban-rural divide
The Oxford dictionary (Oxford University Press, 1989) defined the word ‘urban’ as “relating to a
city or town” and ‘rural’ as “relating to the countryside rather than the town”. Overall, about 30% of
the Indian population lives in urban areas and 70% in rural areas (Census of India, 2011;
WorldBank, 2014). The majority of the population then lives in rural areas, where the poverty level
is higher and the literacy rate lower; literacy rate stands at 67% in rural areas compared to 84% in
urban areas (Census of India, 2011) and where agriculture is a way of life (India is the second
world's largest agricultural producer and employs about half of the active workers of the country)
even though it counts not more than 20% of total GDP (WorldBank, 2014).
Figure 12 – Urban/Rural population, 1951-2011 (World Bank, 2014)
Most of the time, it is commonly accepted that urban people generally work in the manufacturing
and services industry and rural people work in agriculture (India being the second largest
agricultural producer in the world in 2014).78
It is stated by United Nations that “national statistical
offices are in the best position to establish the most appropriate criteria to characterize urban areas
in their respective countries” (cited by Ledent, 2001, p. 106). Considering India, the definition of
urban area is the following one (Census of India, 2011, p. 12):
7
http://www.theindiaeconomyreview.org/Article.aspx?aid=26&mid=3
8
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/s-sivakumar/among-indias-rural-poor-f_b_4117991.html

20
(a) All statutory places with a municipality, corporation, cantonment board or notified town area
committee, etc. (known as Statutory Town)
(b) All other places which satisfy the following criteria (known as Census Town) : a minimum
population of 5,000 ; at least 75 per cent of the male main workers engaged in non-agricultural
pursuits ; and a density of population of at least 400 per sq. km. (1,000 per sq. mile).
Therefore, all areas which are not categorized as Urban Area are considered as Rural Area.
(Census of India, 2011, p. 13)
In the working paper The Rural-Urban divide in India (Hnatkovskaa and Lahiri, 2013), the authors
describe the urban-rural divide by taking into four points account and studying them between 1983
and 2010 to understand the differences between urban and rural areas: the education attainments
levels, the occupation choices, the wages and the consumption expenditure of Indian workers.
According to Sneh Sangwan and Randhir Singh Sangwan (2003, p. 19), “rural-urban differences get
revealed in occupation, environment, size of community, density of population, heterogeneity,
social differentiation, mobility and system of social interaction”. They also focused their attention
on the fact we live in societies in transition, so that even in India “rural-urban differences are
essentially a function of the differential rates of change occurring in towns and villages”: changing
spatial pattern of social variables.
However, the report of the World Urbanization Prospects, the 2014 Revision (United Nations,
2014, p. 4), states that “the urban definition employed by national statistical offices varies widely
across countries, and in some cases has changed over time within a country”. On the same page of
this report (Ibid.), it is more precisely explained what criteria can be used in order to define the
concept of urban area:
The criteria for classifying an area as urban may be based on one or a combination of
characteristics, such as: a minimum population threshold; population density; proportion
employed in non-agricultural sectors; the presence of infrastructure such as paved roads,
electricity, piped water or sewers; and the presence of education or health services.
Even though there are global efforts to produce uniform criteria based on satellite imagery for
instance, it is very difficult to make comparisons due to the heterogeneity of the urban definition

21
across countries of the world. China and India are two good examples that fully illustrate that kind
of problem: rural settlements do not feature any of the typical characteristics of urban areas, but
have large numbers of inhabitants, that is often more than 5,000 people (WUP, 2004).
The term ‘rural’ is widely used because there is not really a shared definition. It is more related to
remote areas where there are only spare house holdings in villages. Distinction between ‘rural’ and
‘urban’, however, remains arbitrary related to the evolution of socio-economic flows over time.
Migration (from rural to urban areas) and rural development (by enhanced quality of life) modify
what is categorized as ‘rural’ over time. Education, healthcare and lifeways constitute the main
flows of the evolution that can occur.
Megan Reed, research coordinator at the Center for the Advanced Study of India (University of
Pennsylvania) depicted the existing urban-rural divide in India as follows: “On the one hand sit
urban metropolises like Mumbai and Bangalore, whose cosmopolitan citizens rail against corrupt
politicians, fetishise growth and care little for parochial concerns, like caste. On the other hand sits
India’s vast rural hinterlands, where caste dictates social relations and corruption takes a backseat to
basic sustenance.”9
In rural India, several features can be gathered to depict the situation: the level of education is low
(literacy rates were around 60 percent according to Census 201110
) and there are still serious
problems of nutrition, healthcare and sanitation (infant mortality rate remains high in rural India,
even though it went down the last two decades; see figures 11 and 12). See below, on figure 10, the
evolution of the average IMR over time from 1995 to 2013 between rural and urban areas.
Year 199511
20059
201312
India Rural Urban Rural Urban Rural Urban
Average IMR 80 48 64 40 44 27
Figure 13 -Average IMR between rural and urban areas, 1995, 2005 and 2013
(author)
9
http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2014/04/03/india-elections-the-ruralurban-divide-dies-out/
10
Census of India, 2001.
11
Government of India, Mortality Statistics in India, p. 67
12
Government of India, Sample Registration System. Registrar General, India. Volume 49, no. 1, September 2014, p. 1

22
Figure 14 - Under five and infant mortality indicators, 2005
(Government of India, 2006)
Variable 2000 2005 2010
Rural poverty headcount ratio at national poverty lines (% of rural population) 41.8 33.8
Rural poverty gap at national poverty lines (%) 9.2 6.8
Rural population growth (annual %) 1.4 1.0 0.8
Rural population (% of total population) 72.3 70.8 69.1
Improved water source, rural (% of rural population with access) 76.1 82.2 88.3
Improved sanitation facilities, rural (% of rural population with access) 14.4 18.7 23.0
Access to electricity, rural (% of population) 48.1 66.9
Figure 15 - World Development Indicators (World Bank, 2014)
Rural India essentially depends on agricultural sector, whose growth national rate is around 2-3
percent compared to tertiary sector which is growing at higher rates around 10 percent. However,
the cost of agriculture increases and there is generally poor land management for different reasons
(partly due to agrochemical use; with Monsanto for instance). Many farmers consequently commit
suicide and since the growth in rural India is far less high than in urban India, several millions
people emigrate for employment opportunities and better life, but as they have low skills they get
very low wages and live in bad conditions13
.
13
http://www.drishtee.com/

23
There results from that fact a migration from rural to urban for searching employment opportunities
and better life conditions (Prasad, 2007, pp. 117-118). Rural to urban migration is particularly a
phenomenon that mainly concerns the poor and backward States of India where there is large
population mobility (Mitra and Murayama, 2008). They show that the intrastate migration is more
important than the interstate migration as socio-cultural aspects differ between States very much.
Interestingly, they operate a decomposition of what constitute urban growth: natural increase;
population of new towns or less declassified towns; increase due to expansion in urban areas and
merging of towns; and net migration (Kundu, 2006).
3.4.3 Other divides: castes, gender and states
In rural India, women are conveniently processed but suffer from all sorts of rules that exclude them
from social life. Thus, they are designed to work indoors and are totally dependent on men.
CASTES
The caste system is a stratification of the Indian society based on two concepts: varnaix
(symbolizing social rank) and jatix
(symbolizing castes and sub-castes). These two concepts are
Figure 16 - Agriculture, Industry and Services in India,
2000-2013 (World Bank, 2014)

24
related in the sense each Indian is born with a social rank arising from its caste (Singh, 2005; Singh,
2008; Ahmad, 2010). It is the British Empire that decided to segregate Indians as a means of social
control, in order to allocate the population to administrative roles or subordinated roles. The caste
system has been divided and hierarchized into five classes (included the out of class
‘untouchables’). By order of social rank, there are Brahmins (the priest and academics), Kshatriyas
(the warriors and kings), Vaishyas (merchants, landowners, farmers and artisans), Shudras (servants
and subordinated to the upper classes) and Harijan14
(untouchables and subordinated to all the upper
classes). By the past, untouchables were considered as impure, so that they were excluded from the
society. After the independence of the country in 1947, Mahatma Gandhi enforced the movement
for social inclusion of the untouchables. Therefore, a positive caste-based discrimination of jobs and
other initiatives for the backward classes of India (Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other
Backward Castes) have been over time formalized by the central government and state
governments. All these public interventions were and still are necessary to protect and improve the
socioeconomic conditions of the lower and backward castes of the Indian Society, because the caste
system still exists today in India (Singh, 2005; Ahmad, 2010).
Negative caste-based discrimination continues as well, even though social position and wealth are
less associated with caste thanks to the public policies put in place. Especially the caste system is
still very present and traditionally respected in rural India compared to urban areas where for
instance inter-caste marriages are more and more frequently and socially accepted. (Sekhon, 2000;
Ahmad, 2010) As it is discussed later in this work, ICTs have been envisioned as tools to empower
the marginalized communities and strengthen their livelihoods. Taking the socio-cultural aspect of
the caste system in India into account, especially very present in rural India, the critical and related
issues encountered with the private and for-profit model of ICT-enabled kiosks will be also slightly
pointed out and discussed.
GENDER DIVIDE
The access to knowledge and education for females in India has been historically very restricted till
the middle of the 18th
century when the British Empire colonized India. The reason behind was that
India was ruled by Muslim dynasties with low consideration for the female status. Under the British
14
Title given by Mahatma Gandhi who envisioned an Indian society inclusive

25
Empire, women’s rights get better and particularly in 1947, when India became independent, the
education system opens up to the girls, as the government took the decision to provide education to
all Indian females (Kumar and Sangeeta, 2013). Therefore, it impacted on their gender literacy rate,
which was at that time consequently much lower than the male literacy rate in India. Here below
you can see the evolution of the gender literacy rates last century; the female literacy rate being still
far lower than the male literacy rate:
Year 2001 2006
Literacy rate, adult female (% of females ages 15 and above) 47.8 50.8
Literacy rate, adult male (% of males ages 15 and above) 73.4 75.2
Figure 17 - Literacy rate, gender, 2001-2006 (World Bank, 2014)
Resulting from this starting situation, it is therefore more difficult for women to apply for a job
(because of persistent gender discrimination, which still even exists nowadays in developed
countries) and there are less women at top positions as they are quantitatively less to be literate in
India compared to men. Nevertheless, in cities, more and more women start to take good positions
and they are more women reaching higher education. These positive signals do not however bode
well: rural India is always very traditional as it remained cut off the outside world because of lack
of infrastructure like transportation networks, overhead power lines, telephone lines, connectivity,
etc. With the emergence and implement of the information and communication technologies in the
emerging countries since the 1980-1990’s, rural India has been kind of ignored area, except that
ICT initiatives have been implemented to bridge the increasing digital divide since 1990’s, not
between emerging countries and developed countries that time but between rural and urban areas. It
is especially there that inequalities are indeed stronger.
Therefore, it is interesting to approach the question of ICT4D in the following way: Do they
positively discriminate women by empowerment initiatives for instance? We will see it is rarely the
case ICT4D to change existing and contextual socio-cultural features of conservative rural India,
but rural initiatives, not necessarily focusing on ICT as an “end” but as an “enabler” or just a
“complement”, can in a certain sense lead to woman empowerment like it is the case with a
franchising business solution of the private and franchise company called Drishtee: the woman
health franchisee15
.
15
http://www.drishtee.com/strategic-solutions/health/

26
STATE DIVIDE
The Indian Population Census 2011 investigated different variables. I decided to take into account
the following ones: state, population, areas, literacy rate, IMR, percentage of phone users,
percentage of computer users, percentage of computer with internet users, percentage of landline
phones and percentage of mobile phones. All the data have been picked up from a website on IMR
and literacy rates (Government of India, 2011) and from a website on computer and mobile phone
users state wise (Updateox.com, 2012). I have adapted the content from the data of this website
(from Census 2011) and organized them in categories; each time I kept the literacy variable and the
percentage of population in each area (urban vs. rural) as references for comparisons. I finally
decided to put states in different colors according to their level of science and technology
development (S&T index) for 21 states (Bhattacharya and Graham, 2008, p. 26).
1. The most advanced states (scores above 0.70; green): Delhi, Goa, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and
Andhra Pradesh16
;
2. The more advanced states (scores between 0.42 and 0.70; yellow): Maharashtra, Karnataka,
Gujarat, Uttaranchal and Punjab;
3. Less advanced states (scores between 0.16 and 0.42; orange): West Bengal, Assam,
Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Orissa and Uttar Pradesh;
4. Bottom of the S&T Index (scores less than 0.16; red): Chattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand,
Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.
16
Andhra Pradesh was divided into two states, Telangana and a residual Andhra Pradesh on 2 June 2014.
Figure 18 - Level of S&T, 2004-2005 (Bhattacharya and Graham,
2008)

27
Results show that most of advanced countries are those which have a higher average literate rate
among their state population (exception: Andhra Pradesh), while most of the least advanced states
are those with lower literate rate. The same phenomenon can be observed regarding the percentage
of phone users in the different states: those with a higher S&T have a higher base of phone users in
their state. Similar observations and convergences are also done with the following variables:
percentage of computers with internet users and percentage of landline phones. They are all both
positively correlated with the fact their State is considered as an advanced State. Moreover, I
decided to see if there was any relationship between IMR and S&T Index. I found out there was, but
that Andhra Pradesh once again was an exception. While Goa (IMR = 11), Kerala (IMR = 12) and
Tamil Nadu (IMR = 22) had far lower IMR than the average IMR for the country (IMR = 44),
Andhra Pradesh has just more or less the average IMR of India (43).
Access to assets like TVs, computers, telephones, Internet and cable services and mobile phones
can help to define the level of welfare (Bhattacharya and Graham, 2008, p. 27). Once again, here
we can see the top two advanced group of countries we defined before have a higher level of
welfare compared to the bottom two other groups.
Figure 19 - Household ownership of selected goods and services, 2004-2005

28
3.4.4 The resulting digital divide
Mita Bhattacharya and Graham Vickery (2008) wrote a report on the performance, growth and the
key challenges of the ICT sector in India. Their work confirmed that even though India benefits
from a huge high-skilled manpower in ICT and the hardware and electronics segment has started to
pick up, a big part of the Indian population is still illiterate, IT awareness is always low, R&D
spending should be increased for benefiting both the IT services and hardware, content creation and
data availability should increase for benefiting the private sector and the public sector (through e-
governance) and finally better evaluations should be pursued in order to set up good practice in
policy design and delivery. The huge challenge of ICT in India certainly results from the urban-
rural divide and its underlying socio-economic features, previously depicted, which make there
exists a consecutive and significant digital divide between urban and rural areas.
The digital divide is an inequality related to access to, use of and knowledge of ICTs by people and
“[…] is related to social inclusion and equality of opportunity” (Bhatt, 2006, p. 33). This divide can
be the symptom of other divides as it indirectly and reciprocally engenders a differential treatment
between citizens or areas according the fact they are in different socioeconomic, sociocultural or
even demographic categories (Tongia, Subrahmanian and Arunachalam, 2005).
In that sense, it can be depicted into several forms as the TechTarget online dictionary17
(accessed
the 10th
November, 2014) shows:
The digital divide typically exists between those in cities and those in rural areas; between
the educated and the uneducated; between socioeconomic groups; and, globally, between
the more and less industrially developed nations. Even among populations with some access
to technology, the digital divide can be evident in the form of lower-performance computers,
lower-speed wireless connections, lower-priced connections such as dial-up, and limited
access to subscription-based content.
Similarly, the dichotomy ‘technology haves’ and ‘technology have-nots’ is often used to refer “[…]
to the gap between demographics and regions that have access to modern information and
17
http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/digital-divide

29
communications technology, and those that don't or have restricted access.”18
Before the 1990's,
digital divide was rather measured regarding the telephone access, while since the emergence of
Internet it is essentially the Internet access, particularly broadband, which serves as analysis
criterion. (TechTarget, 2014)
However, according to what is said in the Markle Foundation’s Report (2003) on National
Strategies of ICT for Development, “Digital Divides are not just the result of economic differences
in access to technologies (Have’s vs. Have-Not’s), but also in cultural capacity and political will to
apply these technologies for development impact (Do’s vs. Do-Not’s)” (cited by Bracey & Culver,
pp. 144-145). It means the digital divide is also shaped with social and cultural norms, and that
policy and the way ICT is implemented (business model) play an important role.
IDENTIFYING DIGITAL DIVIDE
There are 4 main aspects that basically feature the digital divide and enable to understand its
underlying reasons (Bracey and Culver, 200; Tongia, Subrahmanian and Arunachalam, 2005;
Unwin, 2009):
1. Awareness of technology: It is important to understand how ICT can be used and what can
be exactly done with technology as long as people are not reluctant to it in their attitude.
2. Penetration and availability (reach of infrastructures): ICTs are not available to everybody
everywhere. Infrastructure (power supply, telecom and connectivity) is necessary to take
into consideration as it directly impacts other drivers such as accessibility and affordability.
3. Accessibility (access to services and appliances): It is related to the ability to use and
consume the content ICT provide, both lingual and technical. Because of institutional and
infrastructural lacks, rural and remote areas have varying information and communication
needs that are not satisfied. It is first essential to identify and understand these needs
regarding their area of concern and next comes up the question how ICT could fulfill them
through their use.
4. Affordability: All ICT costs must be affordable for people and not exceed a certain threshold
comparatively with their revenue to be generated (not more than 10% of one’s income).
Otherwise, their impact will be negligible and not sustainable. They include life-cycle costs
18
http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/digital-divide

30
(called total costs of ownership – TCO), hardware, software, connectivity, etc. They are a
function of pricing and business model (Barrett and Slavova, 2011, p. 18).
Telecommunications policy generally uses the concept “Universal Service” when it is possible for a
service to be accessible, available and affordable. It is only the case in developed countries or in
developed urban areas of emerging countries where every individual or household can privately use
ICT at home or through wireless devices. Contrariwise, telecommunications policy uses another
concept “Universal Access”, which aims at expanding the access to ICT at remote communities,
often for the first time. It is typically the case in rural areas of emerging countries where access to
ICT is especially community, public or shared accessed.
Figure 20 - Universal acces vs. Universal service (Barrett and Slavova, 2011)
Michael Barrett and Mira Slavova (2011, pp. 17-18), respectively Professor of Information Systems
& Innovation Studies at Cambridge and ICT Researcher at Leeds, distinguish more precisely the
three different kind of access that cause the inequality related to accessibility and availability of ICT
between developed and developing countries or urban and rural people like in our scope of interest:
1. Access to services consists to:
a. the ready availability of content (resources), fulfilling users’ roles as citizens,
producers, and consumers (Barrett and Slavova, 2011, p. 17);
b. the ready availability (to those who are not experts in the technology) of network
access and appropriate support services through commercial vendors (Barrett and
Slavova, 2011, p. 17);
c. the availability of formal and informal learning facilities for developing network
literacy (Barrett and Slavova, 2011, p. 18);

31
d. and the ready availability of channels through which individual users can participate
in decisions about telecommunications services, their social inclusiveness, and the
public accountability of their provision (Barrett and Slavova, 2011, p. 18).
2. Access to appliances is:
captured by the physical layer of ICT hardware devices and the logical layer of software
tools on these devices. With its twofold (hardware and software) nature, access to ICT
appliances links the supply of ICT infrastructure with the provision of services targeted at
end users (Barrett and Slavova, 2011, p. 18).
3. Access to infrastructures or carriage facilities layer is:
a physical technology layer consisting of installed network capacity, network connectivity,
and interoperability standards (Barrett and Slavova, 2011, p. 18).
Figure 21 - Access to services, appliances and infrastructure (Barrett and Slavova, 2011)
UNDERSTANDING DIGITAL DIVIDE
First, it is important to remind, even though we conclude to clear disparities in the way Indian
people have access to ICTs comparatively to where they live (urban versus rural area), the digital
divide is not always related to the urban-rural divide studied and there exist other divides that can
also explain the digital divide such as the “gender divide”, the “states divide”, and finally the
“educated–uneducated“ and the “rich–poor” divides in urban areas (Rao, 2005, pp. 363-364; Bist,
2007, p. 703). Nevertheless, the target of this work is only to focus on the digital divide between the
urban ‘technology haves’ and the rural ‘technology have-nots’.

32
Moreover, most of the time, the digital divide refers to the global digital divide or technological gap
between developed and developing countries. However, the digital divide can also refer to the
national digital divide throughout a country. Pairs of segments can differentiate individuals of a
same nation. For example, the digital divide can be considered between men and women, literate
and illiterate, educated and uneducated, rich and poor, young and old people, etc. Additionally, the
digital divide can be attributed to geographic divides such as between political areas, or more
precisely between developed and developing areas (Rao, 2005). At the same time, gender,
educational, economic and geographic divides are correlated to inequalities related to developed
and developing areas within a country (urban-rural) (Prasad, 2004).
If I take again the framework of the four main reasons identifying the digital divide, I could explain
the difficulties encountered in rural areas compared to urban areas:
1. the level of openness in using ICT and awareness in their potential is very low in rural and
remote areas (awareness),
2. there is a lack of accessibility to the facilities because of remoteness and low economic
attractiveness for the connectivity providers compared to cities (availability),
3. the level of needs that should be satisfied is very high because of remoteness and lack of
availability of service providers and adequate content (accessibility),
4. and the capacity to pay for devices and use is very low compared to urban areas where
population is on average much richer (affordability)
Important reasons that make there exists the digital divide between urban and rural areas in India is
that rural areas are missing electric infrastructures and internet services necessary to support ICTs.
This phenomenon, mainly caused by geographic remoteness, little concentration of population and
low funding for ICT installations, limits the information access and the communication possibilities
for rural people. For instance, in many rural places it is frequent to be confronted to power outages,
while in urban places people get use of well-maintained electrical service and have facilitated and
fast information access as well as new technology with easy reach. Moreover, due to remote and
with limited access locations, rural people have not always reliable access to the internet, while
urban people rarely encounter issues to be connected to the internet. There is a lack of base
infrastructure in other words. As results, teledensity is very low in rural India (see next figures) and
fewer are the users of personal/individual digital devices (see appendix). Moreover, there is low

33
bandwidth and remoteness of certain locations raise barriers of reliability and availability to
universal access to ICT (Baffour Kojo and Lu, 2003).
Therefore, if we have a look at the teledensityxi
in India, which is the number of telephone
connections (telephone lines or mobile cellular subscribers) for one hundred people living within
the same area, we get that in rural areas teledensity equals 42.67% in 2013 compared to 74.02% for
whole India (TRAI, 2014). Rural teledensity in India has more than quadrupled since 2007.
In 2004, India still had a very low teledensity compared to the World if we look at the table below.
Since that time, rural teledensity in India spectacularly grew to 42.67% in 2013 from 1.7% in 2004.
At the moment, it is even growing faster than urban teledensity. The same phenomenon is observed
regarding the number of connections: 282.29 million rural connections in 2011 (most of which are
wireless), compared to 4.84 million (only landline) phones in 2000. It is largely due to the
expansion of mobile telephony the private sector contributed to. Alternatives to mobile phones even
exist: Public Calling Offices and Village Public Telephones are available in almost every inhabited
census village in the country (Gulati, 2011, pp. 3-4).
Figure 22 - Tele-density (rural/urban)
1999-2006 (Bhattacharya and Vickery,
2008)
Figure 23 – Rural/urban teledensity
(Subramanian and Arivanandan, 2009)
Figure 24 - Status of telecom indicators, 2005
(Bhattacharya and Vickery, 2008)

34
Knowing that the population of India is over 1.2 billion people in 2014, it is quite interesting to
know, however, that still only about 120 million people have for instance access to internet, which
gives a very low penetration rate of 10% if we compare with developed countries that have
penetration rates of internet close to 75% as it is the case in Europe. Therefore, India is dramatically
an exception in Asia where the average internet user rate is about 35%, instead of 10% in India as
above-mentioned (International Telecommunication Union, 2013).
The level of literacy and the ability to use ICT systems (computer literacy or e-literacy) are two
other critical factors that positively impact awareness and in turn increase adoption of ICT
(Grimshaw and Kala, 2011). Those people who can use computers have better chance to be
empowered by the services provided in different areas and to become regular users. Although India
has more than 200 universities mainly concentrated in urban areas, illiteracy always stays a big
problem (Mathews, 2001).
This is very clear to note differences between urban and rural areas, taking into consideration the
gender, which is of huge importance in India regarding discrimination (Census of India, 2001;
Census of India, 2011).
 In 2001, the male literacy rate was 71% in rural areas versus 86% in urban areas and the
female literacy rate was 46% in rural areas versus 73% in urban areas.
 In 2011, the male literacy rate was 78% in rural areas versus 89% in urban areas and the
female literacy rate was 58% in rural areas versus 79% in urban areas.
When talking about the age pyramid, it is also interesting to point out differences: Young people
have today a facilitated access to education compared to their parents (World Bank, 2014).
 In 2001, the male literacy rate ages 15 and above was 73% versus 84% ages 15-24 and the
female literacy rate ages 15 and above was 48% versus 68% ages 15-24;
 In 2006, the male literacy rate ages 15 and above was 75% versus 88% ages 15-24 and the
female literacy rate ages 15 and above was 51% versus 74% ages 15-24.
We can then note that the female literacy rate is the one which has the more increased over time,
especially in rural areas with a 12 percentage point increase from 2001 to 2011, but more precisely
for the females literacy rate ages 15-24, where it is a 6 percentage point increase from 2001 to 2006.

35
Moreover, it is very interesting to note for the female literacy rate there is each time between 20-30
percent increase whether it is in rural versus urban areas, or ages 15 and above versus ages 15-24.
Furthermore, the fact that there are 18 languages officially recognized in India does not help people
to get access to knowledge shared by ICTs as there does not exist exhaustive knowledge on the
internet for each language. According to an infographic from Smartling, there was still around 40%
Internet world’s content in English in 2000 (compared to 80% in 1996).
Even though the dominance of English dropped with the growth of the non-English population in
the middle of 2000’s, English internet content remained high with around 25% in 2011. (Becker,
2007, p. 1188; Techinasia19
, 2012) As we can see on the infographic, very few of the Internet
world’s content is in languages recognized by India while about 10% of the world’s population
come from rural India. Therefore, there still exist critical issues for rural India where people are
disadvantaged as unable to find adequate content in their own native language or dialect if they
want to access the Internet. It is called the language divide. (Rao, 2005, p. 364)
19
https://www.techinasia.com/dominant-languages-on-internet-english-chinese/
Figure 25 - Internet world's content
(Techinasia, 2012)

36
4. Bridging digital divide and driving development
As we previously pointed out, rural areas of India lag behind urban areas as they do not have the
infrastructure available, accessible, and affordable enough to provide access to and use of and
knowledge of information and communication technologies. In that sense, there is a social
inequality between urban and rural areas that is called digital divide. Subsequently, rural India is
somehow excluded and marginalized from the socio-economic development of India. Bridging the
digital divide is a first step necessary to overcome before trying to drive development through ICT.
Since the 2000's, there has been a huge international debate on the impact ICT could have on the
productivity and the growth. Most of the results and conclusions which emerged from that debate
converged to admit there was a positive effect resulting from ICT, so that it could be an interesting
driver for developing country. The others, more skeptical, summarized their position as follows:
“you can’t eat computers” (Steinberg, 2003, cited by Kendall and Singh, 2006, p. 1). Indeed, for
developed countries, where critical infrastructures and institutions existed, studies found out
positive productivity impacts of ICT at the micro-level and aggregate level, while for developing
countries, especially BOP markets where infrastructure were poor and institutions were weak
(Tarafdar and Singh, 2011), there was still low evidence. However, Kendall and Singh (2006, p. 1)
admitted: “Nevertheless, there are many situations where IT can deliver real benefits and cost
savings either as an alternative, or as a complement to physical infrastructure development.” In that
sense, ICTs were considered by many as an “inherently enabling metatechnology that [could]
bypass or leapfrog institutional and infrastructural obstacles” (Wade, 2002, p. 460).
Tripathi, Singh and Kumar (2012, p. 825) defined five livelihood assets which ICT could impact:
1. Human capital: Enhanced access to education though distance-learning applications and
tools and more adapted and appropriate services for local communities (regarding their
language and culture).
2. Natural capital: Updated natural resource records such as land, cool etc. and appropriate
decision making thanks to facilitated communication with stakeholders (state, landowners,
etc.).

37
3. Financial capital: Established banking in rural areas such as loans and savings schemes
through micro-credit initiatives.
4. Social capital: Facilitated networking with a much wider community impact and with cost
and time reduction for social networking goals and employment opportunities.
5. Physical capital: privileged access to markets and market information (supply and demand)
for improved decision making.
Figure 26 - Livelihood assets (Tripathi, Singh and Kumar, 2012)
ICT access and use can help villagers to shape their attitudes of change in actions in the sense the
information and knowledge they can acquire through ICT-enabled services can in some ways
enable them to take better decisions and to make more efficient actions in their activities. As long as
economic and social resources or capabilities are provided, they can “interpret information into
usable knowledge”. It finally leads to empowerment and opportunities in that case. Thus, ICT
access and capabilities can be considered as fundamental steps in the Knowledge Economy (Tongia,
2006, p. 4).
ICTs can therefore empower rural and remote areas by leading them to rural development. As a
result, rural communities acquire independence and capacity to improve their living conditions and
level of development (Balit, 1998). The possibilities ICTs provide in connecting people and sharing
information between them has even completely turned the rural development into a new paradigm:
the transition from a traditional society to a knowledge society (Meera, Jhamtani and Rao, 2004).

38
Indian villages have today the opportunity to get connected to the whole country by broadband and
internet telephony (Voice over Internet Protocol – VoIP).
The trend and pattern of growth of the ICT industry in India, such as for instance the numerous e-
governance initiatives which emerged and the positive teledensity variation across states of India, is
however more carefully analyzed by Varma and Sasikumar (2004) who explain that “many studies
have confirmed the positive pay offs of IT in enhancing growth and development” (p.22), but that
the “major impediment for ICT diffusion [in India] is the lack of sufficient infrastructure” (p.32).
As explained in Making ICT infrastructure, appliances, and services more accessible and
affordable in rural areas (Barrett and Slavova, 2011), ICTs have definitely played a positive impact
on income growth in developing countries (Röller and Waverman, 2001; Waverman, Meschi, and
Fuss, 2005; cited by Barrett and Slavova, 2011). ICTs generate new income channels and increase
the quality of life in rural areas (Goyal 2010; Jensen 2007, cited by Barrett and Slavova, 2011).
Therefore wider access to and bigger use of ICTs throughout India should certainly reduce
inequalities in income and quality of life between rural and urban areas (Barrett and Slavova, 2011).
4.1 How to bridge digital divide?
There are challenges and opportunities to bridge the digital divide in India, in the sense it could
reduce the gaps or inequalities between the “haves” from urban areas and the “have–nots” from
rural areas, in order to access ICT. Filling up the existing digital divide we explored in the previous
section needs measures of change in the 4Cs Framework to be considered. Moreover, the ICT
policy is very important and should be considered as well. Therefore, it constitutes the fifth point of
this section.
4.1.1 Computing
As rural people are very poor, it is necessary to develop technology cheap enough and effective at
the same time in order to make rural access to ICT possible and robust. An individual and low cost
solution (personal mobile phone) compared to an individual and unaffordable cost solution

39
(personal PC) is more and more frequent in rural India, while a collective solution of sharing access
and use of ICT (ICT-enabled kiosk) could be helpful and useful for people with low financial
affordability and for huge number of unreached people to serve. Frugal innovation is required in
hardware and software, in order to make the computing as simple and affordable as possible and as
adequate as possible, too (Tongia, Subrahmanian and Arunachalam, 2005).
4.1.2 Connectivity
As access to the internet and the telecommunications remains a huge challenge in rural India since
the rural villages are geographically dispersed, low populated, remote and poor, the connectivity is
essential to provide value over time. Frugal innovation could here help as well by providing
affordable and efficient connectivity systems adapted to the context of rural India. As we previously
said, literacy is still a huge challenge in rural areas and the solution to encounter it is multimedia, so
that broadband connectivity is needed. Terrestrial wireless and satellite technologies are
connectivity technology options that can be applied to facilitate ICT access in rural and remote
areas as they do not require wireline networks. The big advantage with satellite technologies is this
solution can be easily and rapidly implemented and the network coverage can then be remote and
reach isolated areas, while wireline technologies are very difficult and long to be widely extended.
Finally, this is to remind connectivity is more than connecting to the internet; it also concerns
interconnected systems like sensors and connected appliances like tv, radio, etc. (Ibid.; Rao, 2005).
4.1.3 Content
The local content and languages should be available to users. The content provided through e-
services should help to empower rural people and facilitate the emergence of user communities.
Relevant content is necessary in order to address adequately the needs and requirements of ICT
users and it depends on the capacity of the ICT designer to customize the content solutions
according to the context in which they are locally used. Some features impact the contextual nature
of the content such as the location, the culture, the language, etc. (Ballantyne, 2002, cited by
Glendenning and Ficarelli, 2012). Other features concern more the typology of the service

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