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Gram Panchayat Development Plan (GPDP): An Opportunity for Funding Rural Internet Connectivity in India

Posted by Abhishek Raj at Dec 14, 2021 02:12 AM |
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A paper titled "Gram Panchayat Development Plan (GPDP): An Opportunity for Funding Rural Internet Connectivity in India" authored by CIS' researcher Abhishek Raj got published in the book "Community Networks: Towards Sustainable Funding Models". This book was released at the United Nations Internet Governance Forum(IGF) 2021, and is also the official outcome of the IGF Dynamic Coalition on Community Connectivity (DC3).

Internet connectivity has become important for socio-economic development of any region, especially the rural and remote regions. However, a major population of the world including India still remains unconnected to the internet. The traditional ‘top-down’ approach for enabling connectivity has proved to be insufficient for rural and remote areas. In this paper, we discuss an alternative ‘bottom-up’ sustainable multistakeholder model for enabling connectivity in rural India which has an active involvement of the village community through ‘Gram Panchayats’ (also known as Village Council). We also discuss the funding mechanism for this model through ‘Gram Panchayat Development Plan (GPDP)’. We suggest that ‘Internet for Development’ be included as one of the cross-cutting development areas in the GPDP to fund access to the internet in villages.

Click here to access full PDF of the paper. (Refer p. 129- 146). The author extends thanks to co-authors of the paper Dr. Sarbani Banerjee Belur and Ritu Srivastava.

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