IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/1566.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Internet Kiosks in Rural India: What Influences Success?

Author

Listed:
  • Kendall, Jake
  • Singh, Nirvikar

Abstract

In this paper we investigate an example of a very widely applied model for the delivery of IT services to rural and poor populations. The model is one where limited intervention to support infrastructure and coordinate resources is combined with market-based delivery of IT services to the end user (what we call here the “sustainable franchise model”). Though this model has been deployed world-wide by governments, NGOs, and development institutions in the past few years, there has been little research into the determinants of success in such a model. In this paper we examine the example of n-Logue, a franchise of over 1000 locally-owned, Internet kiosks in rural villages in India. We seek to assess how this new sustainable franchise model has worked in practice by analyzing data from 74 of n-Logue’s kiosks. Among other things, we find that gender and education do not affect success, while location and other measures of social standing (age and caste) do. We also find that the uses that villagers have for IT services are not so different from those which first world users have. The lessons we draw from this example are that while local customs and practices must be taken into account (e.g. the caste system), it is not a foregone conclusion that social biases (e.g. against women) cannot be mitigated by good program design.

Suggested Citation

  • Kendall, Jake & Singh, Nirvikar, 2007. "Internet Kiosks in Rural India: What Influences Success?," MPRA Paper 1566, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:1566
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/1566/1/MPRA_paper_1566.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/4320/1/MPRA_paper_4320.pdf
    File Function: revised version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sandra E. Black & Lisa M. Lynch, 2004. "What's driving the new economy?: the benefits of workplace innovation," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 114(493), pages 97-116, February.
    2. Singh, Nirvikar, 2004. "Information Technology and Rural Development in India," Santa Cruz Department of Economics, Working Paper Series qt9wj6d6kv, Department of Economics, UC Santa Cruz.
    3. Robert J. Gordon, 2000. "Does the "New Economy" Measure Up to the Great Inventions of the Past?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 14(4), pages 49-74, Fall.
    4. Timothy F. Bresnahan & Erik Brynjolfsson & Lorin M. Hitt, 2002. "Information Technology, Workplace Organization, and the Demand for Skilled Labor: Firm-Level Evidence," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(1), pages 339-376.
    5. Romer, Paul, 1994. "New goods, old theory, and the welfare costs of trade restrictions," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 5-38, February.
    6. Sanjeev Dewan & Kenneth L. Kraemer, 2000. "Information Technology and Productivity: Evidence from Country-Level Data," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 46(4), pages 548-562, April.
    7. Kaushik, P. D. & Singh, Nirvikar, 2004. "Information Technology and Broad-Based Development: Preliminary Lessons from North India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 32(4), pages 591-607, April.
    8. Dale W. Jorgenson, 2001. "Information Technology and the U.S. Economy," Higher School of Economics Economic Journal Экономический журнал Высшей школы экономики, CyberLeninka;Федеральное государственное автономное образовательное учреждение высшего образования «Национальный исследовательский университет «Высшая школа экономики», vol. 5(1), pages 3-34.
    9. Erik Brynjolfsson & Lorin M. Hitt, 2003. "Computing Productivity: Firm-Level Evidence," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 85(4), pages 793-808, November.
    10. Nirvikar Singh, 2008. "Transaction costs, information technology and development," Indian Growth and Development Review, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 1(2), pages 212-236, September.
    11. Francesco Daveri, "undated". "Is growth an information technology story in Europe too?," Working Papers 168, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    12. Dale W. Jorgenson, 2007. "Information Technology and the G7 Economies," NBER Chapters, in: Hard-to-Measure Goods and Services: Essays in Honor of Zvi Griliches, pages 325-350, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Martin N. Baily, 2004. "Recent productivity growth: the role of information technology and other innovations," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, pages 35-42.
    14. Singh, Nirvikar, 2004. "Information Technology and Rural Development in India," Santa Cruz Department of Economics, Working Paper Series qt9wj6d6kv, Department of Economics, UC Santa Cruz.
    15. Indjikian, Rouben & Siegel, Donald S., 2005. "The Impact of Investment in IT on Economic Performance: Implications for Developing Countries," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 33(5), pages 681-700, May.
    16. World Bank, 2003. "India : Sustaining Reform, Reducing Poverty," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 15046.
    17. Oecd, 2002. "Access for Business," OECD Digital Economy Papers 67, OECD Publishing.
    18. World Bank, 2003. "India : Sustaining Reform, Reducing Poverty," World Bank Publications - Reports 14617, The World Bank Group.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Singh, Nirvikar, 2006. "ICTs and rural development in India," MPRA Paper 1274, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Kendall, Jake, 2012. "Local financial development and growth," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(5), pages 1548-1562.
    3. Jake Kendall & Nirvikar Singh & Kristin Williams & Yan Zhou & P.D. Kaushik, 2007. "Network Economics and the Digital Divide in Rural South Asia," Working Papers 07-30, NET Institute, revised Sep 2007.
    4. Jake Kendall & Nirvikar Singh & Kristin Williams & Yan Zhou & P.D. Kaushik, 2007. "Network Economics and the Digital Divide in Rural India," Working Papers 07-29, NET Institute, revised Sep 2007.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jake Kendall & Nirvikar Singh, 2012. "Performance of Internet Kiosks in Rural India," Review of Market Integration, India Development Foundation, vol. 4(1), pages 1-43, April.
    2. Nirvikar Singh, 2008. "Transaction costs, information technology and development," Indian Growth and Development Review, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 1(2), pages 212-236, September.
    3. Jake Kendall & Nirvikar Singh & Kristin Williams & Yan Zhou & P.D. Kaushik, 2007. "Network Economics and the Digital Divide in Rural India," Working Papers 07-29, NET Institute, revised Sep 2007.
    4. Paunov, Caroline & Rollo, Valentina, 2016. "Has the Internet Fostered Inclusive Innovation in the Developing World?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 587-609.
    5. Singh, Nirvikar, 2006. "Services-Led Industrialization in India: Assessment and Lessons," Santa Cruz Department of Economics, Working Paper Series qt8jn2b8z6, Department of Economics, UC Santa Cruz.
    6. Vu, Khuong & Hanafizadeh, Payam & Bohlin, Erik, 2020. "ICT as a driver of economic growth: A survey of the literature and directions for future research," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 44(2).
    7. Oliner, Stephen D. & Sichel, Daniel E. & Stiroh, Kevin J., 2008. "Explaining a productive decade," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 30(4), pages 633-673.
    8. Nirvikar Singh & Yan Zhou & Kristen Williams & Jake Kendall & P.D. Kaushik, 2013. "Bridging the Digital Divide in Rural India," Review of Market Integration, India Development Foundation, vol. 5(1), pages 1-42, April.
    9. Neeraj Mittal & Barrie R. Nault, 2009. "Research Note ---Investments in Information Technology: Indirect Effects and Information Technology Intensity," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 20(1), pages 140-154, March.
    10. Jake Kendall & Nirvikar Singh & Kristin Williams & Yan Zhou & P.D. Kaushik, 2007. "Network Economics and the Digital Divide in Rural South Asia," Working Papers 07-30, NET Institute, revised Sep 2007.
    11. Francesco Venturini, 2009. "The long-run impact of ICT," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 37(3), pages 497-515, December.
    12. Ronald Kumar, 2014. "Exploring the role of technology, tourism and financial development: an empirical study of Vietnam," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 48(5), pages 2881-2898, September.
    13. Ajoy Ketan Sarangi & Rudra Prakash Pradhan, 2020. "ICT infrastructure and economic growth: a critical assessment and some policy implications," DECISION: Official Journal of the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, Springer;Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, vol. 47(4), pages 363-383, December.
    14. Landon Kleis & Paul Chwelos & Ronald V. Ramirez & Iain Cockburn, 2012. "Information Technology and Intangible Output: The Impact of IT Investment on Innovation Productivity," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 23(1), pages 42-59, March.
    15. Ronald Kumar & Madhukar Singh, 2014. "Role of health expenditure and ICT in a small island economy: a study of Fiji," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 48(4), pages 2295-2311, July.
    16. Dietrich Domanski, 2003. "Idiosyncratic Risk in the 1990s: Is It an IT Story?," WIDER Working Paper Series DP2003-07, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    17. T. D. Stanley & Hristos Doucouliagos & Piers Steel, 2018. "Does Ict Generate Economic Growth? A Meta†Regression Analysis," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(3), pages 705-726, July.
    18. Meijers, Huub, 2007. "ICT Externalities: Evidence from cross country data," MERIT Working Papers 2007-021, United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT).
    19. Alan Hughes & Michael S Scott Morton, 2005. "ICT and productivity growth - the paradox resolved?," Working Papers wp316, Centre for Business Research, University of Cambridge.
    20. Dale W. Jorgenson & Mun S. Ho & Kevin J. Stiroh, 2008. "A Retrospective Look at the U.S. Productivity Growth Resurgence," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 22(1), pages 3-24, Winter.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Internet; rural development; entrepreneurship; India; information technology;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O12 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
    • O3 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights
    • P2 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Socialist and Transition Economies
    • L8 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:1566. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.