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The Centre for Knowledge Societies, Bangalore, enables the State, private sector and civil society organisations to collaborate in ensuring that ICTs have a maximally enabling and inclusive developmental impact.
The next time you surf the web to find information on IT in India, don't be surprised if you come away feeling that the digital divide has already been closed here. All state and central government departments seem to be using IT for new and innovative programmes. The websites of several NGOs claim that they will solve poverty and social inequality through IT. Just about every business magazine seems to have photographs of rural cybercafe owners, and fishermen using Global Positioning Systems. There is a wave of excitement about IT in Development, and it is increasingly difficult to sift the hyperbole from the real impact of information and communications access on the people of India. On the other hand, India's vast development sector is still largely unaware of the uses to which ICTs could be put, and many fear that this technology will further exclude the most deprived sections of society. Information technology is still viewed as an elitist and western luxury that will fail to truly make an impact on the lives of India's rural poor. Various IT-enabled initiatives across South Asia had only limited access to one another, and to the emerging hardware, software and communications technologies that could serve as resources for them. The Centre for Knowledge Societies, based in Bangalore, was established to enable the state, the private sector and civil society organisations, as well as development agencies and academics, work with one another in order to ensure that ICTs have a maximally enabling and inclusive developmental impact. At its inception last year, the Centre prepared a report on the projected social impact of information technology on rural communities. Since then, its hypothesis that large-landholding dominant-caste agricultural communities would benefit most from rural ICTs has been confirmed time and again. The Centre is helping the Gyandoot Project in Madhya Pradesh evaluate the extent to which adivasi versus non-adivasi communities are using their public-access information kiosks. In collaboration with state agencies in Rajasthan, the Centre is working on GIS and Remote Sensing applications to ensure that rural connectivity projects enjoy maximum usage while also providing equitable benefit. It has co-published a guide to Information Technology for Rural Development with the Charities Aid Foundation. It is now developing an online searchable database of developmental ICT projects in India, which will provide! credible data on their actual use in urban and rural areas, as well as their impact on various social groups. Contact: www.cks-b.org
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