Editorial: Mainstreaming ICTs for enhancing rural livelihoods

B. Shadrach Dear readers, My best wishes as you browse through our fourth issue of Mainstreaming ICTs; this time focusing on how the ICT tools could help the rural communities to access livelihood opportunities. When I reflect on the livelihoods framework, I realise how important it is for communities, both rural and urban, to acquire their right to access the five major livelihoods assets: human capital, social capital, natural capital, physical capital and financial capital. Unfortunately, these assets are not easily accessible to communities, especially so when they are poor and disadvantaged. Their vulnerability increases when the established institutions fail to act as facilitators for them to access these rights. It is in this context that I would call for the need of assessing the role that Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) can play in enabling the poor and disadvantaged communities to access the livelihood assets as their basic right. ICTs could be seen as a meaningful ally in rural systems’ research and development only when the tools facilitate the much desired livelihood security in rural areas. Recent times have shown that prosperity in rural areas depends greatly upon the following factors: on- arm and non-farm livelihoods research, innovative methods to sustain the Self Help Groups and small cooperatives such as ICT-enabled credit facilitation, effective management and marketing; information sharing among communities through value addition and advice on post-harvest technologies; early warning and disaster preparedness information on a daily basis; and capacity building among the torch-bearers of rural communities. Rural knowledge centres do offer the hope to help fuse the above factors and empower communities that are vulnerable. While the ICTs do have the potential to provide the above support in making an evergreen revolution, I can also see how important it is to recognise that these knowledge centres not only provide ‘lab to land’ knowledge transfer; but also ‘land to land’ and ‘land to lab’ knowledge transfer. The importance of traditional wisdom as a means for frontier science and technology is now recognised. Initiatives such as Dr Anil Gupta’s HoneyBee and OneWorld’s Open Knowledge Network have already proven the point, and now are growing by leaps and bounds. But to my mind, what comes as a major boon to rural livelihoods is the use of small satellites. Even as I write this editorial, the Indian Space Research Organisation is working towards building more of these. Initiatives like the recently launched Cartosat-I earth observation satellite and Hamsat that was very helpful for the amateur radio operators in the Tsunami days; are extremely important in securing livelihoods in rural areas. Satellite images combined with ICT-mediated data sharing and interpretation techniques are critical to our daily lives. Finally, among many things, I see the need for empowering the rural youth in ICTs so that they can play an ever important role in guaranteeing livelihood security for their respective communities. It is therefore important to note that for every dollar spent in infrastructure development, a hundred fold needs to be spent in developing the inherent capacities of the ‘real’ stakeholders - the community members, especially the rural youth. It is time for us to turn the young rural population—which could otherwise be a huge rural jobless ‘ liability’— into a job-led ‘ opportunity’ and the real ‘ assets’ of the South Asian society. B. Shadrach Editor-in-Chief basheerhamad.shadrach@oneworld.net

User comments