Review of "Taking ICT to Every Indian Village: Opportunities and Challenges"
Murugan Krishnapillai, Chennai · The International Journal of Education and Development using Information and Communication Technology (The University of the West Indies) · 2006
Review of ICT to every Indian village: Opportunities and challenges Review of Garai, Atanu and B. Shadrach (2006): Taking ICT to every Indian village: Opportunities and challenges. New Delhi. OneWorld South Asia, xix, 133 pages. Freely available online: http://www.digitalopportunity.org/section/ict4d/; no price given for hard copy. Skewed growth seems to remain the world order among and within countries. While, on the one hand, there is astounding growth in technologies, which include information and communications technologies (ICT), biotechnology, space technology, etc., contributing to improving the quality of life, on the other, countries are getting devastated for reasons ranging from HIV/AIDS, food insecurity, malnutrition, environmental degradation to engineered political instability cankering on human value systems. And this 'divide' embarrassingly exists both among and within countries. This malaise paradoxically throws up opportunities for multi-stakeholder partnerships for the improvement of people's livelihood and quality of life. It is in this context that education, or in the politically correct expression knowledge, plays a catalytic role. That knowledge can make a difference in the quality of life is not something novel. We are aware that knowledge holds the key for development, and countries that are now affixed with the qualifier 'developed' bear testimony to the phenomenon that knowledge has been and is contributing to national development. That is to say, if knowledge can improve the quality of life, work towards wealth creation and make the world a better place to live, what prevents us from implementing policies that guarantee education to all and a corresponding plan of action for implementation? What prevents us from creating the required human and material resources to address the issue of education for all? What prevents us from redistributing resources to take education to all? What prevents us from reforming our educational systems in order that equity and quality are assured in education, no matter who and where the learners are? If investments in education do assure rich dividends in terms of national development and social transformation, what is the stumbling block? Whose responsibility is it any way to make education available to all who aspire for it? These are not merely rhetorical questions but questions that demand convincing answers. What this boils down to is that governments alone will not be able to effect the necessary changes, but multi-stakeholder partnerships and linkages among civil societies, local communities, government agencies, etc., will certainly help bring about the desired results. With the advance in technologies, particularly in ICT, the possibilities of creating inclusive knowledge societies appear brighter than ever before. Recognizing the powers of ICT to achieve a knowledge revolution in rural India, a National Alliance involving the private sector, cooperatives, NGOs, R&D institutions, government agencies and the mass media was forged in 2003 and subsequently Mission 2007 was set up to establish robust rural connectivity by the 15th of August 2007, the 60th anniversary of Indian Independence. The first two National Alliance Conventions were held in New Delhi (2004 and 2005) and the third was held in Chennai in July 2006. It is against this backdrop that this book, published by OneWorld South Asia, one of the partners of the National Alliance, is viewed. Consisting of four thematic chapters, this book revolves around the concept of wired or wireless infokiosks, which may be conventionally or non-conventionally powered, and seems to recommend it as a viable rural connectivity model. Building a case for infokiosks, the book reports on the various civil society and government initiatives in India over a period of three years since 2003 to extend the benefits of ICT, which have hitherto been within the urban domain, to the rural India represented by 600,000 and odd villages that house about 700 million of the more than 1 billion population. …