This paper was written for the second IGF – Access Plenary Panel (Rio de Janeiro, 2007). It posits that ICTD models for poor people cannot be driven by financial considerations, and neither can they be demand-driven. Access to ICTs for the information poor has a very direct impact on their development status; consequently, ICTs cannot be…
Parminder Jeet Singh
In this piece written for the South Centre Bulletin (issue 5, December 2007), Parminder Jeet Singh and Gurumurthy Kasinathan highlight Internet governance issues that are important from a development perspective. The World Summit on Information Society was the first step towards debating issues of Internet governance and its…
In this article published in the Economic & Political Weekly (11 March 2006), Parminder Jeet Singh and Anita Gurumurthy provide an evaluation of the outcomes of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) held in Tunis in November 2005, which was widely seen as a 'fuzzy' event, since WSIS was never mandated with…
In this article, Anita Gurumurthy and Parminder Jeet Singh analyse the way in which the emphasis on Internet governance and its high visibility in the WSIS process tended to take focus away from the important issue of exploring how the Internet can address long-standing development issues.
It is, on the other hand,…
In 2005, IT for Change carried out a series of three case studies in order to explore community-owned ICTD models in India. The selected initiatives were Akshaya (Kerala), the rural e-Seva kiosks (Andhra Pradesh), and n-Logue, TeNet and DHAN Foundation (Tamil Nadu) which are all large scale initiatives.
The research…
On 20th July, 2013, Parminder Jeet Singh drafted a position paper reflecting on the current nature of e-governance schemes upon sampling and studying recent developments in the area, where he posits that the increasing role of ICTs in governance is resulting in a de facto…
The UN Internet Governance Forum (IGF) has spawned similar initiatives in many countries and regions. However there has been concerns whether some of them merely legitimate corporate lobbying, making it more respectable and institutionalised now. In this context, it is important that IGF like institutions are carefully nurtured, from within the…
IT for Change deliberates on the outcomes of the International Telecommunication Union’s World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) in this op-ed for The Hindu. We consider the refusal of the US and its allies to sign the International Telecommunications Regulations (ITRs) to be a historic turning point in…