A recent survey of 37 e-Governance projects, spread across 11 states in India accorded an overall rating of 8.67 to rural e-Governance projects, against 8.03 to urban projects.
This came as a shock to the popular perception that information technology has a far greater impact in rural areas than urban centres. The survey was conducted over two years by management and ICT consultancy firm SKOCH and was released at the company’s ninth annual summit. Speaking at the summit, Panchayati Raj minister, Mani Shankar Aiyar invited for more private sector participation in the government’s ongoing rural business hub programme. Mr Aiyar also gave away the SKOCH Challenger Award ’06 for best practices in the area of information and communication technology for socio-economic development in the country.
