Issues Related to Selection and Adoption of Technology

The technology selection:

The technology selection process will depend on the basic strategy adopted by planners,
and on general trends in the water and sanitation sector.

Two basic principles outlined in are that communities need to be involved in selecting
technologies from the start of the process, and that planners should adopt a demand-driven
approach.

With a resource-driven approach, the intervention area is selected with minimal involvement of
the community, and the technology is based on global policies, or replicates a blueprint or
successful experience elsewhere. There are several potential problems with this approach that
could undermine the
sustainability of projects. Such problems include lack of community acceptance and
poorlyfunctioning improvements that are underused. O&M costs can also be a concern if the
technology was introduced without involving the interested parties. With a demand-driven
project, by contrast, problems and needs are identified with the full participation of the
communities. This may involve using extension workers to
raise awareness in the communities prior to the start of the project. Communities can then choose
a particular technology, with an understanding of the technical, financial and managerial
implications of their choice. The advantages of such an approach are that the community is
motivated to participate in the planning, construction and O&M phases, and that a community-
based approach for managing the services will be better accepted and implemented. It is likely
that a demand-driven approach will better foster a sense of ownership and responsibility.
Agencies, communities and users should therefore work together as partners, and agree upon
planned activities.

The selection process:

The selection process comprise five steps:-
1. Request improved services.
3. Carry out a participatory assessment.
4. Analyse data.
a) Technical aspects
b) Environmental factors
c) Management capacity
d) Financial sustainability
5. Hold discussions with the community.
6. Come to a formal agreement on the chosen technology.
Technology Adoption:
When examining the adoption of technology, there are various stakeholders and contexts to
consider. These range from the organizational to the individual. Studies related to adoption of
technology within the household context are beginning to emerge in the Information Systems
(IS) area. When conducting any research, selecting an appropriate approach and method is a
critical issue. Technology adoption appears to be one of the less explored topics in the IS area.

Within this context, "adoption" refers to the stage in which a technology is selected for use by an
individual or an organization. "Innovation" is similarly used with the nuance of a new or
"innovative" technology being adopted. "Diffusion" refers to the stage in which the technology
spreads to general use and application. "Integration" connotes a sense of acceptance, and perhaps
transparency, within the user environment.

Typically, past adoptions of a new technology for education have signaled a confidence in its
potential to alleviate a particular problem or to make a job easier or more efficient. Rarely has
bringing about new social and functional conditions been a consideration. Internet and World
Wide Web technology, however, may provide a means of creating totally new learning
environments, and it may be to that end that adoption is initiated. In such instances, "innovation"
and "adoption" may be seen as virtually synonymous elements of the adoption/diffusion process.

Adoption/Diffusion Theories

The "top-down" and "bottom-up" models of adoption/diffusion provide a directional perspective

to the process. Another theory dichotomy relates to the scale of innovation efforts by
distinguishing between macro-level theories and micro-level theories. Macro-level theories
focus on the institution and systemic change initiatives. Innovation typically involves broad
aspects of curriculum and instruction and might encompass a wide range of technologies and
practices. Micro-level theories, on the other hand, focus on the individual adopters and a specific
innovation or product rather than on large-scale change.
 Innovation Decision Process theory
 Individual Innovativeness theory
 Rate of Adoption theory
 Perceived Attributes theory
Each of the above can be considered in the context of either a top-down or a bottom-up
adoption/diffusion process and in either macro-level or micro-level reforms

The technology transfer:

Whether from basic research to applied technology or from one firm to another, the transfer of
technology is fundamentally a matter of the flow of human knowledge from one human being to
another. This can be through education, the scientific literature, or direct human contact.8 At the
legal level, one thinks about licenses dealing with legal rights to use the particular technologies
in the particular context — but it is the human level that dominates the managerial and economic
reality. And the classic view of a flow from basic to applied technology is a great
oversimplification — sometimes, for example, problems or insights arising at the production
level give rise to new ideas that contribute to fundamental basic advance. At least in some
sectors, close links between the basic researchers and the manufacturing experts, and even
marketing personnel contribute to competitiveness and advancement. Part of the technology
transfer process involves the prosecution of patents which is overseen by the national Patent and
Trademark Office. Individuals with advanced degrees in the biomedical sciences are needed to
review and process patents in the biotechnology field.
Technology Transfer is the intersection between business, science, engineering, law and
government ...

 An Emerging Technology is an innovative technology that currently is undergoing

bench-scale testing, in which a small version of the technology is tested in a laboratory.
 An Innovative Technology is a technology that has been field-tested and applied to a
hazardous waste problem at a site, but lacks a long history of full-scale use.
 An Established Technology is a technology for which cost and performance information
is readily available.

Technology Transfer Activities include:

processing and evaluating invention disclosures; filing for patents; technology marketing;
licensing; protecting intellectual property arising from research activity; and assisting in creating
new businesses and promoting the success of existing firms. The result of these activities will be
new products, more high-quality jobs, and an expanded economy.

Measures to make Technology an opportunity for rural

developement
Rural development in general is used to denote the actions and initiatives taken to improve the
standard of living in non-Urban neighbourhoods, countryside, and remote villages. These
communities can be exemplified with a low ratio of inhabitants to open space. Agricultural
activities may be prominent in this case whereas economic activities would relate to the primary
sector, production of foodstuffs and raw materials.

The role of technology in development of rural India

India today has a pride of place among the world’s economy as one of the fastest growing
economies. While rural India too has made progress in several fronts, but villages are still under
developed. So, while schools have been built, many still lack teachers and appropriate teaching
methods. There are phone lines in many villages but getting a dial tone is still a challenge.
Electricity supply is at best intermittent. Health care is still limited in its availability.
Entertainment is limited to radio or television. Transforming rural India is a challenge and it is
perhaps the single biggest barrier to making India a developed country. So, rural India needs
disruptive innovations to make the giant leap forward and technology can play important role in
transforming rural India. By empowering people with access to computing, internet and other
smart technology devices can create a bottom-up revolution across India. These will make people
learn new skills which could be harnessed in a myriad area In this era of globalization, the role of
Technology is of immense significance. Various research activities have proved that Information
and Communication Technology plays a vital role in the political, economic and socio-cultural
development of a country. It has become a powerful tool in removing several impediments in
empowering rural masses. Rural masses have been benefited by ICT in fields such as education,
banking, health care, employment, so on and so forth. This has transformed the lifestyle of the
rural masses tremendously Agriculture: Information technology (IT)-based machines at milk
collection centers are being used in cooperatives to measure butterfat content of milk, test the
quality of milk, and make prompt payments to farmers. "This has resulted in the removal of
incentives to cut the milk by adding water, reduced time for payments from 10 days to less than
five minutes, and has thus instilled confidence in farmers in the cooperative set up."
 Foodgrain production increased from about 45 million tonnes in 1951–52 to over 200 million
tonnes at the beginning of this century.
 Productivity of major cereals increased from 700 kg per hectare in 1961–62 to over 1700 kg per
hectare by 2001–02.
 The net area under irrigation increased from about 21 million hectares in 1951–52 to about 60
million hectares by the late 1990s; gross irrigated area has also increased by over 300 %.
Groundwater irrigation has played the lead role in bringing more area under irrigation, thanks
to technological advances.
 Annual milk production has gone up from about 20 million tonnes in 1950–51 to nearly 100
million tonnes in 2007, thereby taking India to the first position in the world in milk production.
 _Both marine and inland fisheries have registered impressive progress: a major contribution to
this progress has been made by scientific advances in the production of seed, feed, and induced
breeding as well as crafts and gear.
 Science and technology coupled with social engineering have helped to promote conservation,
restoration and commercial forestry and the regeneration of coastal mangrove wetlands.
 Significant progress has been made in the development of affordable drugs for the control of
malaria, tuberculosis, leprosy, cholera and other diseases; small pox has been eradicated and
leprosy is likely to be eradicated soon.
 Many nutritional disorders like those arising from micronutrient deficiencies have now affordable
remedies through a food-cum-fortification approach.
 Rural drinking water supply has been made nearly universal through the design of simple water
pumps and the application of remote sensing and hard rock drilling techniques.
 Rural energy systems have gained enormously from scientific work related to the harnessing of
biogas, biomass, solar and wind and other forms of renewable energy.

Why Technology for Rural Developement:

The UN Millennium Development Goals adopted unanimously by the Members of the UN at the
UN Millennium Summit held in 2000 represent a Global Common Minimum Programme for
sustainable human well-being and security. The first among these goals relates to reduction in
hunger and poverty. Achievement of these goals will depend heavily on the technological and
knowledge empowerment of the socially and economically underprivileged sections of the
society. Starting with the Industrial Revolution in Europe triggered by the invention of the steam
engine in 1780 by James Watt, technology has been an important factor in the rich-poor divide.
If technology has enlarged social and gender divides in the past, the challenge now is to enlist
technology as an important instrument for achieving social and gender equity. If technology is to
serve this purpose, access to it must be based on the principle of social inclusion. The antyodaya
or ‘unto the last’ principle of Mahatma Gandhi is the pathway for inclusive economic growth.

Use in Rural Sector:

Crops:
The majority of the Indian people live in villages. Agriculture continues to be the major activity
in rural areas of India and a substantial section of people are dependent on agriculture for their
livelihoods. Apart from being a major provider of employment, the agricultural sector
undoubtedly plays a crucial role with regard to the food security of the nation. Given this, factors
contributing to agricultural production continue to remain central to the developmental concerns
of the Indian economy. Adoption of modern technology in crop cultivation is a very important
feature of agricultural development in Independent India.
In view of the pivotal role played by the varietal improvement programme in bringing about
rapid changes in the crop production system as a whole, this is considered the most important
technological intervention, or the catalytic technological intervention in the sphere of crop
production in post-Independent India. Having identified the varietal improvement programme as
the catalytic technology that has brought about significant changes in the crop production
system, this chapter attempts a detailed analysis of technological interventions with regard to
some selected crops: rice and wheat among major cereals, maize and sorghum among nutritious
millets, soybean and sunflower among oil seeds, potato among vegetables, sugarcane and cotton
among non-food crops.

Irrigation:
Several technologies, major and minor, have played a crucial role in the development of irrigation in the
country with regard to harnessing, distributing and managing water resources as well as in conserving and
quantifying available water. In this chapter, the attempt is to provide an overview of irrigation
development since the 1950s and to highlight the technologies that have made a significant contribution
towards it, particularly in the post-Independence period. The design and construction of dams in India
have undergone several modifications based on new scientific inputs and experience over the years.

Water Management Technologies:

Various technologies and strategies have evolved to conserve water and to mitigate the negative
impacts of rapid irrigation development. Some of the strategies that have come up in the past two
decades are:

1. Watershed development
2. Conjunctive use of surface and groundwater
3. Micro-irrigation
4. Remote sensing and GIS

Anmal Husbandry:
Since time immemorial, animal husbandry has been closely interlinked with agriculture in India.
Livestock are an important source of income and employment in rural areas. Besides complementing and
supplementing agriculture, animal husbandry provides security to farmers, especially when agriculture
fails. Livestock are essential to millions of poor households across the country not only as a source of
income but also as a major source of protein, supplementary nutrition, draught power, fertiliser, fuel and a
store of wealth. In the post-Independence period, the Indian livestock sector has undergone a major shift,
mainly due to the introduction of new technologies.

Fisheries:
Over the years, the fish production system has been subjected to several technological interventions
pertaining to production, processing, product formulation, packaging and storage. Intensification of fish
culture with biotechnological tools, diagnosis and control of diseases that affect fish, improvement in fish
nutrition from feed formulation to encapsulation, and assessment of water quality are some of the
technological interventions pertaining to aquaculture that have been developed over the years in India. As
far as capture fisheries are concerned, major technological intervention has been with regard to
development of different kinds of fishing craft and gear

Forestry:
The basic concern of forestry is to maintain and develop forest resources in such a way that a sustainable
output of forest products and services is guaranteed. The purpose of forestry science is to establish a
systematic and logical knowledge base for such endeavours. Ideally, forestry science should concentrate
on aspects relating to ‘natural’ factors as well as ‘social and economic’ factors (Van Viet 1987). Scientific
forestry has been practised in India over the last 150 years.1 Independent India has been committed to
conserving her forest resources, and suitable policies have been evolved and adopted with regard to the
protection of forests.

Health:
The leading health problems of rural communities in India can be classified as communicable diseases,
vaccine-preventable diseases, non-communicable diseases and major nutritional deficiencies. Since
Independence, several national level health programmes have been initiated in our country, to tackle
specific
diseases. The objectives of these health programmes have been:
 to control, that is, to bring down the prevalence or incidence rate of specific diseases to a level
where they no longer remain a public health problem
 to eradicate the health problem

Role of Technology in Increasing Rural Water Supply:

The role of technology is significant in the expansion of drinking water supply coverage in rural India.
Given that groundwater is an important source of supply in the various drinking water supply
programmes, technologies related to drilling have played an important role in this regard. There are
several techniques such as electrical resistivity method, seismic method, etc., which can enable mapping
of groundwater resources in a region. Remote sensing and GIS have emerged as powerful technological
tools to identify the location of drinking water wells and also rainwater harvesting structures. The purpose
of artificial recharge of groundwater is to reduce or reverse declining levels of groundwater in a basin.
In a hard rock groundwater basin, it is common to find a fractured zone underlying a weathered zone.

Other tech are also used as: Control of Brackishness, Control of Iron, Control of Fluoride,
Control of Arsenic, Control of NitrateETC.

Energy:
Energy is a primary driver of economic growth and welfare. It enables use of technologies and machines
to increase productivity. Quality energy provides a means to improve the standard of life of people.
India has come a long way since 1947 in building the capability to produce quality energy and to
distribute it to rural areas. India has domestically developed competence in demand forecasting, power
plant design and creation, technical specifications, project management and engineering capabilities.

Technological Interventions: Growth in power generation in the country can be explained by

government policies to expand investment in the sector combined with adoption of prevailing
technologies in building power stations. Rural electrification was considered an important infrastructural
factor for rural development.
Technologies in Thermal Plants:
Indian thermal plants are primarily coal based and to a lesser extent gas and diesel based. Indian coal
has a relatively high ash content, which makes it a less efficient source of heat while its low sulphur
content makes it cause less air pollution. BHEL has been effective in absorbing technology to become
fairly self-reliant in the basic steps of energy generation, transmission and distribution.

Further technologies that have been adopted in Indian coal plants are as follows:
 Pulverised coal (PC) firing with oxides of nitrogen (NOX)
 Coal beneciation
 Atmospheric fired bed combustion (AFBC)
Technologies in Hydro Power Plants: Improvements and technological innovations in hydroelectric
turbines, generators and governing equipment in the past 25 years have produced a new generation of
hydro equipment that offers higher efficiency, lower cost and improved reliability
Technologies in Nuclear Power Plants:
Nuclear power plants require an advanced level of technology and research and hold a place of pride on
the Indian technology shelf.

Conclusion:
 So from above discussed technology which are being used in different part of rural areas
are definitely contributing a lot for rural development wheather it is the case of water
management or agriculture or electrification or communication etc.
 Indian government is also putting efforts in the area of technological advancements and
their use in rural sector to increase production, employment, proper communication
facility, health etc.
 By use of ICT rural people have become the part of global village and they are accessing
internet and getting whatever information they want.
 Technological advancement and its widespread use in a developing country is very
important to keep economy growing
 Involvement of MNCs in rural development has also created pace in the development
process through technological advancements.