Poverty Reduction By Information And Communication Technology

Poverty is a critical problem which facing developing and under developing countries throughout the world. The poverty problem is more critical in developing countries as compare to developed ones. This problem is very grave and the global development community could not be accountable for reduction of poverty without an obvious sense of the level of the problem and to understand that where the majority of poverty is prevalent. There are multi-dimensional problems in rural communities like lack of education, healthcare, income, latest information about weather forecasts and flood forecasts considering their geographical position and general knowledge about markets and its prices, therefore their selling prices are lower than urban market selling prices. The role of information communication technologies (ICT) in citizens’political participation, socio-economic development and poverty alleviation is an active area of study within ICT research in developing countries. Now a day, many of these thoughts disregard the primitive approaches on ICT application that considers luxury goods and service rather than its importance. In this regard, rural Pakistan is one of those places with low access and affordability of ICT’s due to various reasons.To build Logit model for poverty estimation based on the econometric model, validate the key factors affecting rural poverty through empirical analysis from individual factors like household, demographic and so on.Using through research, a conclusion is drawn as:(1) access to ICT have a positive impact on the living standards of rural societies if it used in appropriate way,(2) ICT services provide swift and easy access to updated the latest information, equal opportunities for uneducated, financially marginalize or disable people and a great forum for the share the knowledge and national experiences in endorsement of ICT for development in the rural area. Direct transaction of agricultural inputs, products and services to target consumers, new market opportunities for agricultural inputs and market places and elimination of middle man in marketing transactions and dissemination of knowledge and research to rural community could be achieved through the proper use of ICT,(3) increase in usage of ICT decreases poverty by almost3%in the short-run. While in long-run, a positive relationship is established between ICT and poverty.This study is based on theories that the ICTs have magic power to promote economic growth and to reduce poverty. The main contributions of this research are:(1) Give realization about severe poverty in rural Pakistan, a Logic model is used to o estimate the rural poverty of some selected villages as a case of Pakistan. The results show a positive relationship between poverty and ICT(2) Based on empirical studies, this research proposes an ICT based model in the shape of telecentres, using econometrics method called error correction model, in which the model defines a long run equilibrium relationship among the cointegrated variables (ICT and Poverty).(3)Through positivism research, This paper is able to find out main factors that contribute to the reduction of poverty, including Direct transaction of agricultural inputs, products and services to target consumers, new market opportunities for agricultural inputs and market places and elimination of middle man in marketing transactions and dissemination of knowledge.