Governance lessons from the experience of telecentres in Kerala

Abstract

Telecentres are seen as essential components of governance reform in the international development community and great optimism has been expressed in academic and policy literature regarding their developmental potential. The scope of our paper is to move beyond the confines of conventional governance ideology and to propose a broader conceptual lens through which to study the complexity of issues that need to be addressed in order to make telecentres sustainable. Following several years of experience with these projects, evidence shows that their long-term survival depends upon how interactions are managed between a host of players including the government, private entrepreneurs, international donors, telecommunications suppliers, local companies, civil society organisations and individual community members. This paper proposes that the sociology of governance approach is highly relevant for a study of telecentre sustainability. This theoretical approach is used as a lens through which to investigate issues regarding the sustainability of the Akshaya telecentre project in Kerala in terms of interactions between various groups of players. We adopt a practical reflexive-interpretive methodological approach to encourage the development and reshaping of theoretical ideas about governance through our empirical data. We identify five critical issues currently affecting sustainability of the Akshaya project focusing on how relations and exchanges have been managed over time. Our analysis has important theoretical and policy implications for the Akshaya project and more generally for telecentre initiatives launched as part of governance reform in developing countries.

Keywords:

• telecentres
• governance reform
• sociology of governance
• Kerala
• Akshaya

Notes

1 Examples of telecentre initiatives launched by international agencies: USAID's Leland Initiative (http://www.info.usaid.gov/regions/afr/Leland); IDRC's Acacia Initiative (http://www.idrc.ca/acacia/index.html); ITU (http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/index.html); UNESCO (http://www.unesco.org/websowlr/iip/#funding); and WB (http://www/worldbank.org/html/fpd/telecoms/subtelecom/selected_projects.htm).

2 Kooiman (2003) refers to several social theories that focus on action/structure and from which he gains inspiration for his theory of governance as interaction. For example, Berger's Inter-Actor Theory, Giddens’ Structuration Theory, Burn's Actor-System Dynamics and Bourdieu's Theory of Symbolic Power.

3 Akshaya literally means ‘infinity’.

4 Gram Panchayat is a village council.

5 After the village, the block is the next unit of administration in the administrative hierarchy.

6 This was in keeping with the philosophy of the Kerala model of development according to which civil amenities such as primary health centres, ration shops and schools would be located within close proximity of community members.

7 The term ‘social entrepreneurs’ was coined by the government to reflect the type of entrepreneur that was required for the project.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Shirin Madon

About the author

Shirin Madon is a Senior Lecturer in Information Systems at the LSE. She is currently responsible for teaching a Masters course on IT and Development. Her research focuses on the impact of IT on governance reform and she is engaged in fieldwork in India looking both at IT-enabled back-end reform of government processes as well as front-end e-governance applications. With a current focus on telecentres, she is currently researching projects in Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala.