Publication

Abstract : Government agencies, public institutions, and private companies in India have worked over six decades to empower Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP) or rural communities through various policies and interventions. Eighty-five percent of these technological interventions failed to create an impact as they lacked a holistic approach, scalability, sustainability, and effective interagency coordination. This paper discusses the successful implementation of interventions through Amrita University's Live-in-Labs™ program and proposes a model that ensures a co-design environment to develop technology-based interventions for rural development. The model aims to create a virtual ecosystem that will enable field practitioners, researchers, policymakers, and other stakeholders to plan, design, implement, and review scalable and sustainable interventions. The paper describes the key components of the model and investigates the sustainability, scalability, and impact of the technology interventions in the program's five main thematic areas - Infrastructure amp; Basic Facilities, Health amp; Livelihood, Education amp; Technology, Energy, and Environment amp; Farming - through a case study.