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Rural Knowledge Centers as Facilitators of New Learning Opportunities for the Rural Families: a case study

OAR@ICRISAT

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Relation http://oar.icrisat.org/5653/
 
Title Rural Knowledge Centers as Facilitators of New Learning Opportunities for the Rural Families: a case study
 
Creator Dileepkumar, G
Dixit, S
Balaji, V
 
Subject Agriculture-Farming, Production, Technology, Economics
 
Description There are various names and descriptions for rural knowledge centers, but their main role is facilitate the access to managed or direct information services for rural families. India is home to a very large number of pilot projects in this sector over the last about ten years. The number of internet-connected rural knowledge centers varies but is believed to be close to 10000 as of mid-2006. The recent decision of the Government of India to establish about 1,00,000 Common Service Centers has generated altogether new possibilities and opportunities to design and make available a wide range of information services for the rural poor in India.
Earlier studies indicated that the access to government information, and information on education were the two priority information demands. A number of projects include provision of governance-related information as a key service. Education mostly relating to IT literacy is offered on many projects although systematic efforts to measure the importance and impact of such information are not yet available.
One of the significant challenges that India faces is the recurrence of disasters that lead to large scale disruption of economic and development activities and causes considerable distress among the victims. Over a period of time, relief measures have become affordable in many situations but the cumulative losses are staggering. The Disaster Management Authority of India has identified drought and earthquakes as among the phenomena that can cause deep and lasting distress among the victims while generating massive economic losses to the system as a whole. There is a need to identify new systems that combine early warning arrangements with access for appropriate support services.
Over the last two years, ICRISAT has made an effort in partnership with CRIDA to study the possible use of rural knowledge centers in enhancing drought preparedness at the micro-regional level among the rural families. The pilot is premised on the assumption that a country such as India has reasonable arrangements for early warning communication in a top-down manner. International experience shows that such top-down flow of important information must combine with a bottom-up process for its rapid and effective use by the intended recipients, namely the rural families. The rural knowledge centers, operating in an interactive hub-and-spokes model for local value-addition and dissemination and capture, could provide the right interfaces to generate such blended communication.
 
Date 2006
 
Type Conference or Workshop Item
NonPeerReviewed
 
Format application/pdf
 
Language en
 
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Identifier http://oar.icrisat.org/5653/1/rural_knowledge_Case_study_2006.pdf
Dileepkumar, G and Dixit, S and Balaji, V (2006) Rural Knowledge Centers as Facilitators of New Learning Opportunities for the Rural Families: a case study. In: International Conference on Statistics and Informatics in Agricultural Research conference, 27-30 December 2006, New Delhi, India.