Policy briefs

The National Policy on Education 1986 emphasized: “The status of the teacher reflects the socio-cultural ethos of the society; it is said that no people can rise above the level of its teachers”. The National Knowledge Commission (NKC) has observed that teachers are the single most important element…

This paper discusses the background, strategies, outcomes, challenges and learnings of Kishori Chitrapata, a project of IT for Change that addresses the learning needs of out-of-school adolescent girls through innovative uses of ICTs such as video, radio and computing technology.

The…

India is known as an IT powerhouse but still has the largest number of poor people out of any country in the world. India’s experience with policies for digital inclusion may thus offer some useful lessons for other developing countries. This policy brief looks at a range of initiatives in India including the ambitious Common…

The Department of Public Instruction, Government of Karnataka and Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India, have initiated an ICT programme for all the high schools of the state. This entire programme, including the classroom training, has been outsourced. However, our research suggests that vendors are finding it challenging…

This policy brief was originally prepared as an expert input for the 'Regional Conference on Delivering Social Protection to Unorganised Workers', held in Bengaluru (India) in November 2010, and organised by the Department of Labour (Government of Karnataka) and GTZ (Germany). It explores the different ways in which…

IT for Change (ITfC) submitted a solicited paper on the role of Common Services Centres (CSCs) to the e-governance division of the Department of Information Technology of the Government of India. The paper briefly examines the CSC model of employing ICTs for community development, wherein one telecentre is being set up in…

ICT programmes in schools in India have largely failed to achieve their goals of positively impacting learning processes and outcomes in schools. Implemented usually through 'PPP' (Public Private Partnership) models, these programmes have been treated largely as  silos. Schools and teachers have not seen  computer learning as…

This paper was contributed for a report prepared for the United Nations Global Alliance for ICT and Development (UN GAID) Global Forum on Access and Connectivity in least developed countries and small islands developing states in Asia/Pacific and innovative financing mechanisms for ICTD, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on 18-20…

This paper is a contribution to the Second Administrative Reforms Commission on 'Citizen Centric Governance'. The paper introduces e-governance in the Indian context and provides suggestions both from the strategic level to implementation on how the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) can improve…