Tapping ICT to reduce poverty in rural India

he World Development Report 2000/01: Attacking Poverty identifies three priority areas for poverty reduction: increasing opportunity, enhancing empowerment, and improving security. Opportunity makes markets work for the poor and expands poor people’s assets. Empowerment makes state institutions work better for poor people and removes social barriers. Security helps poor people manage risk [30]. In light of current experiences in rural India and elsewhere in the developing world, it is apparent that information and communications technology (ICT) — defined as the set of activities that facilitates the capturing, storage, processing, transmission, and display of information by electronic means [31]— can be utilized to support poverty reduction