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Notes
- 1.
Technology planning is no more a local affair. National technology planning is influenced greatly by the trade-related policies developed by the World Trade Organization (WTO), a successor to the GATT. Some critics caution that unless the developing countries are well prepared and coordinated, there would be greater dependence on the developed countries for technological development.
- 2.
An instance of such an effort is “The Global Knowledge for Development” (GKD), which has helped people solve their problems, forge partnerships, and become allies in the global quest to make developmental information and knowledge available to all (www.globalknowledge.com).
- 3.
In south Asia, for some critics, where most rural populations lack running water and sanitation systems, where electricity is still a scarce and intermittent resource, where roads are poor and education a luxury, these new technologies truly appear to be far removed from the everyday concerns of the poorest sections of the countryside. Despite these feelings amongst many critics, Economic development experts ranked improvement in telecommunication infrastructure as most important in the context of rural development (Ontario Federation of Agriculture Internet and Rural Development Recommendations for Strategy and Activity, @ www.fao.org, 1995). There are some scholars in India who are very optimistic about the prospect of IT revolution and India’s ability to unleash its vast economic potential. (Jagdish Bhagwati, ‘Confederacy of Doers’, India Today, special millennium issue, October 2000).
- 4.
For most comprehensive listing of projects in the Indian context see Web pages of the India Digital Divide project of the World Economic Forum’s Global Digital Divide Initiative, which was launched at the January 2000 meeting in Davos, Switzerland? India digital divide initiative hosts a public Web sites to “raise awareness on the digital divide in India and to collect and showcase projects and activities that have been carried out in India that help bridge the digital divide between India and the rest of the world (see betty.hansom@uconnvm.uconn.edu). For description of initiatives and evaluation of the ICT projects see the printed edition of the Global Information Technology Readiness Report 2001–2002 as well as other companion publications of Oxford University Press. http://www.oup-usa.org/reports/[see also the listing of the association of progressive communication http://www.iicd.org, http://www.apc.org,, and the UNDP’s Human Development Report 2001 http://www.undp.org/hdr2001]. India’s National Association of Software and Service Companies ( www.nasscom.org), Inomy.Com (www.inomy.com) and many of their Web sites host important statistics and information on India’s Internet economy. BytesForAll.Org (www.bytesforall.org) is a voluntary online community that shares information with other Web-oriented advocates across south Asia. The NGO Voices serves as a research and capacity-building resource for community radio, and is beginning to experiment with the interface between Internet and radio. Mahiti.Org (www.mahiti.org), a branch of the NGO Samuha provides IT services for NGOs in Bangalore.
- 5.
Online trade and commerce in small towns and rural areas in India have grown five times in the last year (see Times of India, Rural India joins the Online Trading, February, 11, 2006).
- 6.
This was made clear by the science policy resolution in 1958 and in The Proceedings of the Third National Conference of Scientists, Technologists and Educationists, which was held in 1970.
- 7.
- 8.
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Subuddhi, K. (2009). Development of IT-Infrastructure for Rural Connectivity: A Pro-poor Approach to E-Governance for Rural Development in India. In: Gibbs, D., Zajda, J. (eds) Comparative Information Technology. Globalisation, Comparative Education and Policy Research, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9426-2_9
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