Page 176 - ITU Kaleidoscope 2016

2016 ITU Kaleidoscope Academic Conference

For example, agencies are giving money for micro- available to the community and empowering the
entrepreneurship development, expecting SHGs to produce communities to interact, collaborate and participate in the
goods and services, but they usually do not provide any development of society and transforming the way they live,
market linkages. Similarly, agencies are organizing learn and work. NCoRe is an ongoing initiative to build
training for SHGs without considering their need and next-generation collaborative and responsive community
capabilities. Agencies are focusing on frequency of by empowering the rural community of India with an ICT-
meetings among SHG members and loan repayment issues enabled “capability framework” involving the self-help
but pay less attention to their day to day problems. Thus, groups (SHG) at the different block, district, and state
the entire approach is exogenous in nature (development levels. Currently, it collects data from the target
from outside), in the sense that it uses a “push” approach communities through interactive SMS, as internet
towards development, without considering the nature and accessibility and affordability is still a problem in rural
problems of individual SHG. This approach overshadows India. However, NCoRe can easily be upgraded to the
the endogenous model of development (development from internet-enabled interactive system to build next-
inside) [6] that focus more directly on human beings and generation collaborative and responsive communities.
their resources and aspirations.
In this context, the power of ICTs can be fully exploited to 2. DEVELOPMENT OF RURAL COMMUNITIES
promote local development. For many remote THROUGH ICT
communities, ICTs are a means for communicating with
the outside world. Intelligent use of ICT can improve ICTs have the potential to make a huge impact on
involvement of everyone in the community, especially developing countries. Not only can ICTs be used to
young people. It may help to build networking with integrate rural communities into wider economic and social
agencies and help administration with digital development, but digital technologies can also be used to
documentation for monitoring and evaluation. There are enhance and preserve the knowledge and culture of rural
several Government / Non-Government initiatives in India communities [9]. However, as mentioned earlier, this
to include ICT in a rural community in general and SHGs assertion is derived from an exogenous model of
in particular. The major focus is to give access to internet development that underpins many of the interventions
connectivity and value-added mobile services. For aimed at employing ICTs to meet poverty reduction goals.
example, the Common Services Center Scheme has started It comprises development from outside and it overshadows
as a part of the ambitious National e-Governance Plan the endogenous model of development (development from
(NeGP) of Government of India. The Scheme envisages inside) model that focuses more directly on human beings
the setting up of 100,000+ IT-enabled access points and their resources and aspirations. [6, 10]
(internet kiosk) to act as outlets for two basic services –
reaching an IT infrastructure to all Indian villages and 2.1 The Exogenous Model
developing an organizational system for delivering services
over this infrastructure employing the profit incentive [7]. The exogenous model assumes that the necessary
The 'EShakti' is another initiative by NABARD, specially technology (in terms of hardware, software, and services)
designed project for e-bookkeeping of SHG records and already exists in the world, as does the considerable
related Management Information System (MIS) on a real experience of its use. Therefore, the development task is to
time basis. This is in tune with the GOI's mission for encourage the acquisition and application of the
creating a Digital India. To begin with, two districts viz. technology, support training of its use and promote the
Ramgarh (Jharkhand) and Dhule (Maharashtra) are being type of regulatory changes, as needed [6]. This assumption
covered in pilot mode [8]. is based on traditional theories of modernization, in which
technologies are „transferred‟ from „developed‟ countries
However, making ICTs available is not enough to ensure to less developed ones. “The exogenous model (and indeed
that people have access to right kind of information; it is some versions of the endogenous model), cloaks the
more important that ICTs are appropriated and used in a interests of investors in the global „North„ whose principal
way that helps resolve daily concerns. With this ambition is profited from the sale of digital technologies
perspective in mind, this paper proposes NCoRe, an and the content that is hosted on or circulated through
interactive community-driven information system platform them” [10]. An interesting recent example is Facebook‟s
to harness the potential of community participation in Free Basics, where Facebook offers free internet access to
governance. In a digitally-connected global society, each users only for a few selected sites including Facebook.
individual in a community of people is not only a
consumer of information but also a producer of It is beyond doubt that through this approach, quite a few
information: a potential contributor in many ways to build significant developments have taken place. ICTs are
a better community. They can collaborate for a social acquired and used; telecommunication infrastructures are
mission, participate in local governance, respond to the improved and the cost has decreased; connections to the
emergencies, communicate their needs and wants and share outside world are made. There are significant progress in
their knowledge and expertise to help other several countries like Africa, Srilanka, Thailand,
underprivileged communities. With this notion, NCoRe Bangladesh, India and several South-East Asian and east
offers an interactive platform to exploit the potential of European countries in the domain of 1) agriculture and
community information and knowledge, making them health 2) infrastructure, communication, and community

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