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ICTs in Rural Poverty Alleviation
Social structures are crucial in determining who is able to access any technology and use it beneficially. While making new information and communication technologies (ICTs) cheap will make them more accessible to the poor, there will be other factors which determine their impact. The current low penetration of ICTs is a reflection of the digital divide in overcoming which there is no way to bypass a confrontation of low educational levels, which itself is linked to landlessness.
In India there is now a new mantra – information and communication technologies (ICTs). In a burst of ‘technology as solution’ enthusiasm not seen since the green revolution, ICTs are expected to solve a variety of problems, ranging from assuring India’s place in the sun to establishing good governance and alleviating poverty. This note deals with the possible role and limitations of ICTs in poverty alleviation. Poverty alleviation is not a matter of service delivery, but one of enhancement of agency of the poor, based on the transformation of class, caste, ethnic and gender relations within which the poor exist.
The ‘technology as solution’ approach [Heeks 1999] ignores the social structures that determine both access and impacts. While cheapening technology certainly has a role to play in making it more accessible to the poor, social structures are crucial in determining who is able to access any technology and use it beneficially. To take an instance from the green revolution, the uneven spread of this technology as between Punjab, Haryana and west UP compared to Bihar, West Bengal and east UP, was related to the stronger presence of family owner-operators in the first region and of tenants in the second region. With all the current hype about ICTs it is necessary to remind oneself that social structures influence both access and impacts.
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