Telecentres in Rural India

Conceptualizations about telecentres essentially connote shared access to computer and the Internet for socio-economic development. Based on the available literature, the chapter traces the emergence and evolution of telecentres as development interventions in rural India. Deployment of telecentres in rural India by various agencies are not stand-alone phenomenon, but embedded in the larger discourse on ICT-D. Their deployment in rural India was spurred by policies and programmes of development agencies, NGOs, government agencies and private sector organizations. Objectives vary from efforts to bridge the digital divide, expand the reach and effectiveness of service delivery systems or to build a platform for rural distribution and procurement channels. The multiplicity of agencies and their objectives manifests in the multitude of telecentre models. The chapter puts forth a typology of existing telecentre initiatives in order to identify the key characteristics of different models. This along with the brief review on impact of telecentres forms the background for the conceptual framework delineated in the next chapter