The Role of ICT in Governing Rural Development

Abstract

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) hold tremendous potential for rural development in India in the areas of agriculture, health, Micro and Small Enterprises (MSEs), and education. Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) refers to systems for producing, storing, sending and retrieving digital files .These files can contain text, sounds and images, both still and moving. Information and communication technologies, and particularly the Internet, are transforming all human activities dependent on information, including those in rural areas. Advancement in information and communication technologies (ICT) has demonstrated opportunities to the people to utilize it in their socioeconomic and cultural development in a better and more sophisticated way. By utilizing it, the government finds the importance and role played in delivering services at the locations convenient to the citizens. The rural ICT applications attempt to offer development ideas and solutions to the people who are deprived of basic human facilities such as safe drinking water, diary, education, immunization, reproductive health, employment generation, human rights, etc. Similarly, the government and administration try to exploit the technological explosion by utilizing the ICT in offering improved and affordable solutions to these basic necessities of the people at their village doorsteps. Towards the beginning of 21st century, in India, we have witnessed at our disposal a technology of which our forefathers could only dream— a technology which can transform local happenings into global events and which can reverse the trends towards divergence.