Understanding the Linkage of ICT to other Developmental Constructs in Underserved and Poor Rural Regions
Shivraj Kanungo, Parameeta Kanungo · Journal of the Association for Information Systems · 2004
The role of ICT in rural and undeserved regions is receiving increasing attention.The disparity between information haves and have-nots (the "digital divide") in the urban versus rural areas is significant.This divide is even more pronounced in developing countries.While there appears to be a general agreement on ICT being a crucial component to reduce the digital divide, it is not yet clear how exactly ICT alone helps alleviate poverty.This field has been driven by activism and action-orientation.Hence, the theoretical basis for ICT's role in development has not yet received much attention.This paper addresses the complementary role of ICT as an input for developmental initiatives.Given the absence of theories, we employ an empirically grounded approach to develop a preliminary theoretical understanding.By adopting a case study approach we list out issues that are cognate to the developmental process in rural India.By employing Kelley's theory of personal constructs, we subject those issues to interpretive structural modelling.By employing this research process, we are able to synthesize the knowledge of experts and practitioners.Doing so reveals many of the contradictions and opportunities that are present in ICT interventions in developmental contexts.We highlight two aspects of ICT intervention i.e complementarity and direct and indirect benefits.Our findings assume increased importance because the role of context is shown to be crucial.As a result, the methodology adopted by us can be used by practitioner's to seek clarification across multiple stakeholders, build consensus models, negotiate tradeoffs, allocate budgets and, most importantly, develop an appropriate and meaningful evaluation framework.The main contribution of this work lies in providing a theoretical framework that can be refined in future studies.We expect other researchers to join us in our future efforts to subject these models to rigorous variance-theory based scrutiny.