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A common objection to IT initiatives suggests that they are premature in as much as electricity, telephony and connectivity are highly erratic and variable. Moreover, more basic kinds of infrastructure including schools, healthcare centers, balanced
nutrition, gender equity, employment and transportation are lacking.

This criticism assumes that there is a standard sequence and hierarchy for development: first a society must adequately manage its nutrition and healthcare, then education, total literacy, then electricity to all its villages, and then, it must install telephones and so forth.

Diverse social and infrastructural needs must be addressed more or less simultaneously to ensure a nation's future growth and prosperity. Information networks can become conduits that allow money to flow into the village through new kinds of industries. ICT can also compensate for other kinds of infrastructure limitations. For example, if online work, trade, or payment were to become available for a village community, the poor quality of roads to and from that village becomes less of an obstacle to earnings and employment. Finally, and most importantly, if capital were to become more readily available within a village community through such networked systems, it would then be in a better position to finance the basic infrastructure that it needs, including roads, dispensaries and water and sanitation systems.

Thus, IT is the technology that has the potential to fuel the growth of this nation, be it GDP, exports or rural areas (as exhibited in the table below).

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* Contributed by: -
Shruti Rustagi,
Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow.