CS671 : Information and Communication Technologies For Socio-Economic Development

Autumn Semester, CSE, IIT Bombay.
Instructor(s)
* Prof. Krithi Ramamritham
* Prof. U.B. Desai
Teaching Assistant(s)
* PushpRaj Agrawal

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IT 625

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Lecture Schedule (Autumn 2008):
Tueday: 17:05 to 18:30 hrs
Friday: 17:05 to 18:30 hrs
Venue: SIC 301

Motivation

Many IIT faculty have been holding discussions about how we can incorporate various research and development activities at IIT-Bombay, in the area of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) for improving the quality of life in rural India, into our academic curriculum. There were several motivating factors, some of which are:
  • It is time that this area gets the respect as an area to pursue research – our experience indicates that there are many challenging research tasks in addressing the issues.
  • It is important that larger number of students start thinking about the impact that our work can have on our society and in particular rural and small town India.
  • Besides learning, post-graduate teaching also provides a forum where ideas can be generated, discussed, debated and validated.

Thrust

The course will dwell into information and communication technologies that can help in improving the quality of life for rural and small town India. Access to information certainly becomes a critical factor; therefore access technologies (including silicon), access infrastructure and information processing become immediately relevant. Moreover, for long term impact and nation wide impact, issues of sustainability and scalability of technologies become very important. If we believe that wealth generation for rural and small town India is imperative, then we cannot stop at technologies, issues of sustainable and scalable business models, finance (micro finance) models will also become very important. This makes it amply evident why we need a team to teach this course. Though our thrust and case studies will be from India, we will keep in mind the larger domain of developing countries. In fact, resources permitting, we would like to involve speakers from other developing countries, possibly, via video conferencing. The course will not simply dwell on the virtues of ICT for sustainable development but also critically investigate where its benefits may trickle down and its socio-cultural implications.