Watts, Water, Wireless: The benefits and deficiencies of “tech waves” in rural India (2012)

Undergraduate: Jiakun Ding

Faculty Advisor: Nikhil Kaza
Department: International & Area Studies

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This thesis examines the role that platform technologies play in poverty reduction in one of the most disadvantaged regions of the world—northwestern India. Once a small, remote village acquires infrastructural public goods, why and at what rate do individual households then procure the technological products and services that these platform technologies enable? Especially in the India context, how are the socioeconomic benefits elicited from these platforms and products skewed along the lines of caste and socioeconomic class? Fourteen interviews were conducted in Kadmal, a village in the state of Rajasthan. Quantitatively, household assets and expenditures were itemized. Qualitatively, we sought to understand the benefits that various technologies have had and the distribution of these benefits. Findings indicate that the past few decades have witnessed a technological revolution in this small, remote village, especially in the realms of electricity, water, and telecommunications. Six major impetuses drive the patterns of household procurement of these three technologies. Most importantly, access to technological public goods and the ability to capitalize on nascent technologies continue to be severely skewed against the lower castes and the poor.