Governance of Rural Information and Communication Technologies: Opportunities and Challenges

Despite phenomenal changes in policy improvements, a digital divide still exists for national policy makers, state agencies, and service providers regarding the role of information and communication technologies (ICT) in rural settings. ICT has gained the status of infrastructure, and numerous approaches have been taken to exploit opportunities that ICT provides. Various agencies have piloted many projects showcasing usability of ICT at its core to extend services in the rural sector and address issues related to digital divide. Though many of the pilot projects are being considered for scale-up under the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP), most of the projects have remained supply-driven, leaving much scope to transform them into citizen-centric projects. This limitation is an important dimension of the digital divide requiring the attention of policy makers and implementers. Included are contributions drawn from field-level experiences, such as the disparity in rural-urban ICT infrastructure, trends in spatial databases, and GIS applications.