i4donline: May - June 2003 issue: The KIOSK Networks: Information nodes in the rural landscape

“The percentage of growth that an IT firm like HP [Hewlett-Packard ] will get from people whose income is less than $1 a day is not going to be that signifi- cant … we don ’t have a significant percentage of our future growth even coming from people who live on $3 a day … I mean,,do people have a clear view of what it means to live on $1 a day?There ’s no electricity in that house,none.So is somebody creating computers that don ’t require electricity?…No,there are no solar power systems for less than a dollar a day,honest …You ’re just buying food, you ’re trying to stay alive...”

Bill Gates speaking at the Digital Dividend seminar.ⁱ

“… there is an urgent need to examine the catalytic and enabling role to be played by the government in ensuring that IT provides new opportunities for the 40%of the people who are living below poverty line,so that they may move above it.”

Government of India Working Group on Information Technology for Masses.ⁱⁱ

“Let IT remain the staple for academics and professionals.What will it mean for people in the thousands of miserable villages in this misguided nation?Please, please come out of your ivory tower and see the plight of Indian villages,sans water,sanitation and decent living.Photographs of farmers posing with PCs and fishermen analyzing computer printouts may befit a TV ad,but what are you trying to sell?”

Letter to the editor of a leading news magazine,responding to a feature on the digital empowerment of rural India.ⁱⁱⁱ

Introduction
The idea that the internet and related tech- nologies might have an important role in aiding developmental efforts has captured a central place in international policy de- bates.Over the course of the last three years,statements affirming the need to close the so-called ‘digital divide ’ between social groups with and without access to the internet have been made through sev- eral UN agencies,at the G-8 summit,and at meetings of developmental organiza- tions around the world. The idea of digitally-oriented develop- ment is as powerful and seductive as the technology upon which it is based.No sin- gle technological revolution has changed the lives of current generations in the way that the internet has. No cultural-techno- logical innovation since Television has had this kind of impact on the world ’s econo- my,its politics and its globalizing popular cultures,or even on our cultural concep- tions of distance and time.The promise of digital development is that it might have the same reach as the original internet boom of the mid 1990s – only this time,, the most disprivileged communities,those who had missed out on earlier waves of technology,might be able to ‘leapfrog ’ over their more developed competitors.The greatest obstacles to rural development – large distances and inadequate infrastruc- ture – might be obviated by instant access to virtual institutions that provide bank- ing,education,health care,neonatal in- formation,agricultural advice,and so forth. But skeptics also have good reason.Bill Gates ’ now infamous dictum,,that a com- puter cannot benefit someone earning less than a dollar a day,remains a serious chal- lenge to any attempt to ameliorate social and economic disparities through Infor- mation and Communications Technolo- gies (ICTs).iv In South Asia,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 technologies truly appear to be far removed from the everyday concerns of the poorest sections of the countryside.Al- though,this article begins by critically ex- amining the problems and possibilities of digital development in order to reveal the larger impact that ICTs could have on ru- ral economies and societies,it goes further to particularly identify Information Kiosks as the most effective vehicle for digital development.