Farmers' access to resources via networks in remote rural areas with mobile phone reception: Creating a resource battery for a mountain tribe in south India

• Published in: Rural society Vol. 20; no. 2; pp. 174 - 186
• Main Authors: Matous, Petr, Tsuchiya, Takaki, Ozawa, Kazumasa
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Maleny Routledge 01.04.2011; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Access to Information; Agricultural Occupations; Cell phones; Communication; India; Indigenous Populations; individual social capital; Literature Reviews; mobile phones; Personal communication service systems; personal networks; Remote rural areas; Resource Materials; Rural Areas; Rural Development; Social aspects; Social Capital; Social capital (Sociology); social capital measurement; Social Isolation; Social Networks; Social Structure; Tamil Nadu, India; Telecommunications; Telephone Communications; Tribes; Well Being; Tamil Nadu; India
• ISSN: 1037-1656; 2204-0536
• DOI: 10.5172/rsj.20.2.174

Inhabitants of the most remote areas tend to have low access to information and resources potentially contributing to well-being. Ongoing expansion of ICTs deeper into rural areas is expected to improve this situation by enabling them to contact geographically distant others. We interviewed 79 women and men in an indigenous tribe in the mountains of Tamil Nadu, India, where explosively expanding mobile phone signal entered prior to other types of infrastructure, and we inductively developed a scale for assessment of the inhabitants' overall access to valued resources through their personal networks. It was found that the mobiles contributed primarily to the maintenance of existing networks and to speedier mobilization of already accessible resources. However, since the phone owners called only with people whom they already knew well, they did not expand their networks nor increased their overall access resources.