This Paper has won Consolation Prize in the CoolAvenues' Paper-writing Competition - "In Search of Excellence" - for the Year 2005.

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Abstract

The paper describes how e-commerce can foster a balanced rural development. Prime reason of poverty is lack of information, which can be tackled via empowerment through e-commerce village network called VillageNET. Poor are bankable, and offer a good opportunity for business.
E-commerce can help in all the aspects of development from dairy, banks, agriculture, education, medical, insurance, art and culture, entrepreneurship, women empowerment and rural tourism, making it a 'balanced development' approach.

Introduction

E-commerce is business conduced via the Internet as a world-wide distribution channel for goods and services (Chapman Tripp (2000)). Unlike previous forms of electronic commerce - via fax, telephone and telex - e-commerce represents a qualitative jump in the ability to bring buyers and sellers closer together. In this paper, we propose a government regulated VillageNET for rural e-commerce.

Rural India has immense potential and untapped resources. The proper identification and utilization of these resources not only helps in its development but also makes good business sense. E-commerce is a very powerful tool which can be effectively used for this purpose.

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* Contributed by -
Meenal Nigam & Vivek Patni,
NITIE, Mumbai.