The PC in an Indian urban slum: enterprise and entrepreneurship in ICT4D 2.0

Abstract

This paper examines the embedding of information and communication technology (ICT) tools in everyday practices among underserved populations in urban India. Using ethnographic investigations of PC-aided micro- and small enterprises (MSEs) in a low-income slum neighborhood in Mumbai, it pursued three broad research goals: first, to etch out organic ICT immersions in underserved technology environments; second, to articulate a new and evolving socio-technical system in an urban slum ecology; third, to seek a fit between goals of ICT for development and impacts of PC-aided enterprise on ICT access and adoption. Based on the ICT4D 2.0 approach interrogating the technology-for-development discourse, this paper substantiates the need for a “new view of the world's poor: one that views the poor not as passive consumers but agile agents and innovative producers of ICT products and services.”

Keywords:

• ICT4D 2.0
• urban slum
• Mumbai
• ethnography
• micro- and small business

Notes

Thomas Molony is the accepting Guest Editor for this article.

We use the term Web 2.0 commonly associated with interactive and user-generated content, allowing them to collaborate with each other in a social media dialogue in contrast to websites where users are limited to the active viewing of content. Examples of Web 2.0 include social networking sites, blogs, wikis, video-sharing sites, hosted services among others.

There is a body of work around micro-entrepreneurship fuelled by micro-credit (Karim, 2008). Our framing of micro-entrepreneurship is more inclusive of stand-alone commercial enterprises that are not recipients of aid money and seeks their fit with end goals of ICTD bringing technology to the poor.