ABSTRACT
The genesis of the information village concept, which has operationalized into a viable experiment,2 was a formalized set of conversations organized by the M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF). According to Swaminathan (2001) the economic gap between the North and South can be accounted for, in large part, by differential in the ability of populations to absorb and use technology effectively to create value. That being the case, it is reasonable to speculate that information technology, which has the greatest potential to democratize, equalize and empower individuals, can be highly effective in improving the quality of lives of the poorest of the poor. In general economic terms, that which is profitable for the poor is also profitable for the rich. However, more often than not, the reverse does not hold. Hence, while the conceptual and ideological attraction of using information technology (IT) to improve the quality of lives of the poor is great, there are numerous infrastructural, resource-related and developmental gaps that need to be addressed concomitantly when we conceptualize, design and deploy IT in highly resource-challenged environments. The information village experiment has been detailed elsewhere (Kanungo, 2001). We address the two notions of replicability and sustainability of the information village project. While we believe that the experimental framework of the information village project, where a knowledge center (KC) is established in a village, is replicable because of the now welldeveloped and documented experimental protocol, the goal of sustainability is more challenging. In this paper we subject this concept to creative and constructive analytical rigor. Our results indicate that the challenge associated with the digital divide - the gap between those with access to [information and communication] technical resources and those without (O’Neil, 2001) - remains formidable. From a theoretical standpoint, viewing IT interventions in a resource-challenged environment allow us to conceptualize and view the dynamics in a manner that allows us to reframe the discourse about sustainability and replicability.
