E-Information System as a Tool for Rural Development Of India – A Study

Abstract

E-government applications are being implemented in various developing countries under the promise of accelerating development processes. The initiatives are driven by the promised power of ICTs, which governments try to draw upon to modernize their functioning and to offer better services to the citizens. Further, these initiatives tend to be driven by the policies of international donor agencies that often impose such initiatives as a condition for aid. In this thesis, it is argued that these initiatives tend to be implemented within an economic development perspective that tends to marginalize concerns of the human well-being. The capability approach drawn from the works of Amartya Sen, which emphasizes the moral side of development and the enhancement of human capabilities, is seen as a useful means to try and redress this imbalance. This thesis presents an in-depth theoretically informed and empirically based study of e-government initiatives undertaken inIndia. Theoretically, the aim is to understand the development philosophy inscribed in the studied e-government initiatives and how they seek to meet broader developmental concerns as articulated by Sen’s capability approach. The theoretical aim is to analyze the relation between egovernment and development, which provides an important contribution to the domain of studies relating to ICT for development. Empirically, this relation between ICT and development is analyzed within the context of the broader strategy inIndiaof public sector reform and development, and three particular e-government projects currently ongoing are studied. The three projects studied included: the electronic Land Management Information System, the State Financial Management Information System and the Government Network.