ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the concept of knowledge asymmetry and chalks out the importance of enhancing the experience, skills and attitudes of rural community, along with equipping them with relevant information, in any attempt to bring holistic empowerment. It is through purposive use and sharing that knowledge turns into a valuable asset that has the potential of overcoming rural marginalization by enhancing agency, social capital and opportunity structure of target group. It is only when rural community derives “knowledge capability” that the rural sector will develop the capacity to compete with other developed sectors. However, enhancement of knowledge capability of rural target group is not the final step towards attaining rural empowerment. While purposive knowledge exchange can enhance knowledge capability of rural target group, it may remain limited to such enhancement at an individual level. As a result, although the rural community gets equipped to operate knowledge assets, lack of communitarian connection disallows them to utilize their knowledge processing abilities in pursuit of enhancing their opportunity scopes. Generating better opportunity prospects is only derivative of effective mitigation of knowledge asymmetry. Mitigation of knowledge asymmetry is expected to take place through effective community formation. In the presence of an effective community, there are prospects for effective knowledge transaction, which has the potential to enhance agency, social capital and opportunity scopes of rural members on a holistic level. Amidst such a backdrop, mitigation of knowledge asymmetry can take place, once the rural members develop knowledge capability to initiate effective inter- and intra-group transaction.
