Looking beyond 'information provision'
Janaki Srinivasan · 2010
Development projects based on Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) attract significant funding support. Many such projects are initiated on the premise that ICTs can play an important role in reducing acute information asymmetries in low-income regions. Advocates of ICT-based projects hope that the provision of information will lead to effective markets and economic development. However, is it in their role as information providers that ICT-based projects shape the most change? Based on my research on an ICT-based project called Sustainable Access in Rural India in Tamilnadu, I argue that change in this project was shaped less by the provision of information to an entire community than by the spaces for interaction that the project opened up specifically for female kiosk operators. In their role as intermediaries between the state and citizens, operators in this project started to see the state differently and were, in turn, perceived differently by the village community.