The Rise of ICT for Commerce in Small Product Offerings Case studies from India

The paper makes a case for information and communication technologies (ICT) in small businesses against the broader backdrop of the developing economy of India. ICTs come to India through two routes; the global employment route of IT information companies or the development route of donor-driven services to bridge internal digital divide. Local and context specific ICT based services in small businesses are organic, market-driven and self-sustaining bringing affordable services to hitherto ‘underserved’ and ‘information poor’ contexts. It seems pertinent to ask if ICT as service offerings in small business can sustain and evolve a participatory eco-system resulting in expansion of benefits to the player/entrepreneur and customer/user of technology. From a case-study in urban India we observe that most ICT-based or ICT-empowered businesses, services and products are shaped by two factors 1. The nature of key players driving business 2. Local and evolving customer relevance of the product. The two can combine to produce a third- opportunities that can turn businesses round to a more aggressive consumer oriented service offerings to sustain business and increase ICT infusion into local markets

The mobile internet in the wild and every day: Digital leisure in the slums of urban India

The wild and the everyday point at once to twinned aspects of life and, in this article, to a technological imaginary drawing upon the use of the mobile internet in urban slums of India. The article responds to the rathe

JAPAN'S DECADE-LONG RECESSION

This paper attempts to analyze the structure of the decade-long Heisei Recession by clarifying the relation of the causes and effects of the recession from the start of the bubble in the 1980s to the end of the recession in 1999. It is revealed that the reason why the Heisei Recession was so long and so severe lies in the fact that, because two causes of the recession (the continuous fall of land prices and the insolvency of financial institutions) were new for the Japanese, the government made errors in finding policies appropriate to overcome the recession. It was after passing the 'nightmare' in the autumn of 1997 that the government established a system of financial stability which enabled the Japanese economy to get out of this recession. However, there are several tasks with which the Japanese economy has to cope in the near future

Digital dilettante and the creation of romance

Nimmi rangaswamy explores myriad experiments with creative expressions of the constructing the self in the digital sphere summarizing a 12-year research journey with young adults and social media. Discussions of anonymity and pseudonymity, of intimacy, desire, connection, and attention will draw examples from the marginalized sections of youth in India. Romance emerges as the social theme underlying the power of digital media to overcome social constraint overlaying the thirst to connect, friend and chat going beyond Goffmanesque social performativity and towards defining potential social transgressions. Romance is the medium channeling and staging fantasies, aspirations and play to explore potential possibilities of social mobility