Out of over one billion Indian population, about 70% live in 600,000 villages. Much of this rural population is isolated in terms of access to information, materials, and markets, despite the strong growth of IT industry in India. The adult literacy rate in India is about 59%. Teledensity (the number of telephone lines per 100 people) is less than 1.5% in rural, while it is more than 15% in urban areas (Rao, 2005). The rural areas are thus relatively disconnected from the national mainstream. The UN Global e-Government Survey (Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2003) provided comparative ranking of countries based to two indicators: e-Readiness and e-Participation. India ranks 87 out of 173 nations in e-Readiness. The E-Readiness of a nation is determined by Web measure index (India rank 32), Telecommunication infrastructure index (India rank 138), and the Human capital index (India rank 146; Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2003). E-Participation index measures 21 citizen informative and participatory services and facilities (India rank 22).
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