Sustainability in Knowledge Transfer, the Village Knowledge Centres in South India

Abstract to RGS conference (submitted and accepted):

The M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) established three Village Knowledge Centres in 1997 in Pondicherry in southern India with support from the Canadian International Development Research Centre. These were founded on the idea of "access to information as the key to holistic rural development". These three villages expanded into the Information Village Project, comprising eight villages, both agricultural and coastal. These have proved so successful that they now form the core of a national movement entitled the "National Alliance for Mission 2007, Every Village a Knowledge Centre; mobilising the power of partnership." The key to the success has been the total participation of villagers in their knowledge centres, which are maintained and managed by the villagers themselves.

The author is visiting this project on a ten week sabbatical from February 2006 to study the ways in which this project has proved so successful and sustainable beyond the initial funding period. He will be looking at how IT ignorant villagers have become expert at using computers and networks to obtain the information which is most useful to their communities and how the problems of infra-structure depreciation are handled. This paper will summarise the findings and indicate ways in which the methodology of the Village Knowledge Centres may be applicable in other communities and environments.

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