TUESDAY TALK SESSION-XVth

TUESDAY TALK SERIES The continuous faculty interaction programme Tuesday Talk Series session XVth was organized at Jagan Institute of Management Studies, Sector 5, Rohini New Delhi on Tuesday,8th January,2013. It is a paper presentation initiative by the academicians to share their research papers or any other similar activity with JIMS fraternity. The resource person for the day was Mrs. Pooja Jain (Associate Professor, JIMS). Mrs. Jain presented the paper on the topic Impact of ICT on Rural Market Demand as part of her research work. She started the presentation by defining the Rural Demography i.e. Any habitation with a population density less than 400 per sq. km, where at least 75% of male working population is engaged in agriculture and where there exists no municipality on board. She further stated that as per the census of India 2011, there are 833 million people who reside in rural india. The literacy rate has increased to

74.04% due to better education facilities and rural urban literacy gap has come down to 16.1% . Incomes of Rural people have increased due to increase in MSP, good monsoons, NREGA & Bharat Nirman Project . In rural market there is a change in lifestyle, habits and taste of rural consumers. She further opined & defined ICT (Information, Communication & Technology) as all kinds of computer and communications systems such as mobile, internet, telecommunications, which have a huge potential and growth. She also stated the new age ICTs available i.e Mobile and Internet. She also mentioned the objectives of her study i.e to find out relationship between Information and Communication Technology, to understand and explore any co-relation between ICT and Agriculture/Education and Health in rural/semi urban india and to explore the challenges in implementing IT applications in rural areas. She also

talked about ITC Kiosk that have been established with Internet Access in some of the parts of Rural India which acts a guiding tool for farmers. She further stated some of the government initiatives like Web Durbar, farmrbazaar.com, Samuha, Infodev, Drishtee Warna wired village project that uses ICT facilities in increasing better living standards for the weaker sections of the society. Lastly, she mentioned the ICT constraints in rural India which is Lack of awareness & infrastructure, improper electricity supply, no internet connection or a PC at Home, and also a belief that there is no need for internet. Overall, the interaction was an educative experience creating an interactive environment which was a useful experience to be learnt for the staff & the faculty members.