Millions of people in rural South Asia are exposed to high levels of arsenic through groundwater used for drinking. Many deployed arsenic remediation technologies quickly fail because they are not maintained, repaired, accepted, or affordable. It is therefore imperative that arsenic remediation technologies be evaluated for their ability to perform within a sustainable and scalable business mod...

Inspired by the potential of Information and Communication Technologies, henceforth ICTs, for socioeconomic development, and supported by a university based technology and business incubator, Rural Production Company, henceforth RPC, was set up in 2007 employing an ICT-mediated distributed production model. This paper reveals how RPC, initially an exploratory project whose key innovation was it...

This paper describes a new knowledge acquisition method using a generic design environment where context-sensitive knowledge is used to build specific DSS for rural business. Although standard knowledge acquisition methods have been applied in rural business applications, uptake remains low and familiar weaknesses such as obsolescence and brittleness apply. We describe a decision support system...

In the light of past attempts to provide universal access to telephony and data connectivity, this paper outlines a new telecom architecture tailored to the needs of rural areas, the Sachet Telecom technology. It presents an economic model for an Indian state, Rajasthan, showing the Sachet Telecom architecture, besides empowering local entrepreneurs, scores over the conventional approach in com...

P roducer services, a collection of business-tobusiness service industries, have become an important source of job generation across America. In fact, 9.3 million of the 30.1 million new jobs created in the United States from 1974 to 1991 were in the producer services industry, the largest growth of any broad industrial sector in the nation. Has the rural Heartland shared in this producer servi...

Gendered relations in resource access and farming are two important intersecting themes of gender studies in a northern rural context. However, conventional analysis and perceptions of the economy conceal the contribution of women within families, in businesses and in the labor market. This article demonstrate the significance of capital to farming women’s engagement with agriculture using a Sw...

Rural broadband service providers (“BSPs”) follow business plans characterized by the design, engineering, construction, and operation of privately owned convergent broadband networks that overlay or are “overbuilt” on top of preexisting networks owned and operated by incumbent competitors. As such, they provide true facilities-based competition in these markets. BSP network access rate regulat...

China has a largest population in the world (1.3Billion) and 0.9 Billion is rural population. Most of rural people earn less than US$3/day, and they are called 'Base of the economic pyramid (BoP)'. Compared with high level market, BoP is a new market, which means a low individual profit, but a large population. This paper discusses the healthcare issues in rural China (BoP) and study their heal...