Impact of ICTs in Rural Development of India

Our Country a is rural based country. Near about 70% of the total population live in rural areas. The livelihood of the population is agriculture. The socio-economic condition of the rural population has very worse since independence. Hence rural development is the utmost concern of the government of India. Since post-independence, the government has taken various measures for the upliftment of the rural economy. Rural development is necessary for faster economic growth, social justice, and improvement of the standard of living of the rural people by providing poverty alleviation measures, better livelihood opportunities, better infrastructure facilities, etc. ICT is a new tool for rural development. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) play a tremendous role in rural development in the areas of agriculture, health, education, marketing, rural employment, disaster management, climate change, etc. However, due to a lack of growth and awareness about ICTs among the rural people the process of development is very low. This paper mainly attempted to discuss the different applications of ICT in various sectors to improve the condition of rural areas and the challenges faced by rural people for proper implementation of ICT to develop the rural economy. The present paper is natively based on secondary sources of data collected from published journals, research reports, websites, etc. and the study is descriptive.