ICT: A 21st Century Agrarian Revolution for Rural Development
Contents: 1. Impact of digital revolution on rural society in India/Mrinal Chatterjee. 2. Agricultural knowledge dissemination system: A destiny to agrarian revolution in Bihar/Alok Kumar M.L. Choudhary. 3. Community radio: Vision, philosophy, models and status in India/Joginder S. Malik, Krishan Yadav. 4. Community radio for development of rural India: An introductory approach/Aprana Singh. 5. Community radio for location specific knowledge management in rural India/Debabrata Sethi Raksha. 6. Information technology intervention in rural development with reference to space technology/Chandan Singh. 7. Mobile communication and development of rural India/Govind Singh R.K. Isaac. 8. Harnessing ICTs for Indian Agricultural and rural development/K.S. Purnima Bhagyalaxmi. 9.Agricultural development through Information Communication Technology (ICT) in India/M.L. Meena Dheeraj Singh. 10. ICT Oriented extension services: An overview/Pankaj Kumar Ojha.
It is by now a foregone conclusion that the economic impact of ICT revolution has been large. Without the World Wide Web (WWW), globalization and outsourcing would not be nearly as viable as they are today. Digital technology has impacted the way people communicate. It has impacted social interaction and also privacy of people like never before because of its unique storing an retrieval capacity. But the question remains: what is its impact of ICT on rural society in India? The question is pertinent looking at the socio-economic profile of people living in rural areas. Impact of any technology warrants its large scale use by people. Uses of any technology depend on for ‘s’: access, affordability, applications and adoptability. In other words it depends on its availability, practical utility, cost both capital and recurring, and ease of use. It is interesting to note that digital technology can have greater impact in the rural areas because all these factors are more important, at times critical in rural areas than in urban areas.
