If the State provided free computer literacy, would it find takers? Evidence and propositions from the Akshaya project in India

Joyojeet Pal ()
Additional contact information
Joyojeet Pal: University of Washington

Information Systems Frontiers, 2009, vol. 11, issue 2, No 2, 105-116

Abstract: Abstract The Akshaya project from Kerala has been a much discussed case for the community of practitioners and scholars working on technology and development. A unique feature of the project is its state-wide e-literacy goal in which one member of every household was trained in the telecenters set up under Akshaya at public expense. Using a survey of 1,750 households in the experimental area of Malappuram and a comparison group of neighbouring Kozhikode, this work investigates the extent of e-literacy and discusses the performance of service delivery using telecenters. While the question of whether public funds should be spent on projects such as telecenters or e-literacy continues to be an ongoing debate, the evidence here is that even though structural factors such as service delivery mechanisms and publicity make an impact on technology adoption, the overall participation in free e-literacy services among poor households remains low.

Keywords: Developing nations; Human factors; Rural areas; Technology social factors (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10796-009-9173-0 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:infosf:v:11:y:2009:i:2:d:10.1007_s10796-009-9173-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/10796

DOI: 10.1007/s10796-009-9173-0

Access Statistics for this article

Information Systems Frontiers is currently edited by Ram Ramesh and Raghav Rao

More articles in Information Systems Frontiers from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().