Abstract. Information and Communications Technology (ICT) can reduce poverty by improving poor people's access to education, health, government and financial services. ICT can also help small farmers and artisans by connecting them to markets. It is clear that in rural India -as well as in much of the developing world-realization of this potential is not guaranteed. This paper outlines a simple model to explain why a digital divide may exist between rich and poor. Low-cost access to information infrastructure is a necessary prerequisite for the successful use of ICT by the poor, but it is not sufficient. The implementation of ICT projects needs to be performed by organizations and individuals who have the appropriate incentives to work with marginalized groups. Furthermore, grassroots intermediaries and the involvement of the community are identified as the key factors that foster local ownership and the availability of content and services that respond to the most pressing needs of the poor. The poverty-reducing potential of ICTThe World Development Report 2000/01: Attacking Poverty identifies three priority areas for reducing poverty: increasing opportunity, enhancing empowerment, and improving security. Opportunity makes markets work for the poor and expands poor people's assets. Empowerment makes state institutions work better for poor people and removes social barriers. Security helps poor people manage risk. In light of current experiences in rural India and elsewhere in the developing world, it is apparent that ICT -defined as the set of activities that facilitates the capturing, storage, processing, transmission and display of information by electronic means [32]-can be utilized to support poverty reduction strategies. The use of ICT applications can enhance poor people's opportunities by improving their access to markets, health, and education. Furthermore, ICT can empower the poor by expanding the use of government services, and reduce risks by widening access to microfinance. ICT projects for poverty reduction in rural IndiaAlthough most of the rural poor in India are isolated from the information revolution, there are several examples in rural India where ICT is used to contribute to poverty reduction in the areas of opportunity,

from the participants in the expert workshop on a rights-based approach to conditional cash transfer programmes held in the FAO Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean in Santiago, on 17 and 18 March 2011.United Nations publication ISBN: 978-92-1-121757-5 E-ISBN: 978-92-1-055172-4 LC/G.2497-P N° de venta: E.11. II.G.55 • 2011-263 Copyright © United Nations, September 2011, all rights reserved Printed in United Nations, Santiago, ChileRequests for authorization to reproduce this work in whole or in part should be sent to the Secretary of the Publications Board, United Nations Headquarters, New York, N.Y. 10017, United States of America. Member States and their governmental institutions may reproduce this work without prior authorization, but are requested to mention the source and to inform the United Nations of such reproduction. Cuadernos de la CEPAL ForewordEver since its founding, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) has maintained that social development, poverty eradication and, above all, efforts to secure greater equality are the cornerstones of democratic, fair and prosperous societies in the region. This message was made explicit in the publication launched on the occasion of the thirty-third session of the Commission, entitled Time for equality: closing gaps, opening trails (ECLAC, 2010b). In that publication, ECLAC emphasized the importance of taking action on various fronts as a way to secure broader social inclusion, equality and respect for human rights.Designing and implementing social policies that ensure a multidimensional approach to the complex issues of exclusion, vulnerability, inequality and poverty therefore needs to be one of the region's top priorities. A crucial component of that task will be the strengthening of social protection systems.In that connection, the present volume seeks to identify and describe the role played by conditional (or co-responsibility) cash transfers (CCTs) as one of the main tools used in the fight against poverty over the past 15 years in the region. These programmes, whose scope and replication have extended well beyond the region's borders, aim to break the chain of intergenerational transmission of poverty by building human capacity in the most vulnerable families. To that end, CCT schemes provide direct cash transfers that are tied to certain conditions being met, mainly in the areas of school attendance and medical check-ups. They should thus contribute not only to reducing levels of income poverty but also to building human capacity, which is a key component for the sustainable development and advancement of the region's societies. 6 ECLAC The CCTs implemented in various countries of Latin America and the Caribbean share the same basic architecture but exhibit significant differences in their overall conceptual design, including in terms of coverage and implementation. This publication presents a detailed compilation of those differences together with a review of the areas of ongoing discussion, in the hope o...

Resumen Después de más de una década de avances en diversos ámbitos del desarrollo social, desde 2015 en América Latina se registran aumentos en la pobreza, deterioros en indicadores del mercado laboral y un estancamiento en la reducción de la desigualdad del ingreso. Estas tendencias son preocupantes ya que pueden perjudicar los indicadores de salud y exacerbar las profundas desigualdades en salud. Esta situación demanda respuestas integradas de políticas, capaces de crear sinergias entre diferentes sectores. Existe un creciente reconocimiento sobre el rol de la protección social en la erradicación de la pobreza y la reducción de la desigualdad. Los diversos mecanismos de protección social aminoran los costos de acudir a servicios de salud de manera directa e indirecta. Mediante la expansión de la cobertura y el acceso universal, las acciones de promoción y prevención en salud y nutrición, y de manera fundamental, la lucha contra la pobreza, la desigualdad y la exclusión, la protección social juega un papel ineludible para la garantía del derecho a la salud y la superación de desigualdades en esta área. La reducción de las desigualdades en salud debe ser una prioridad para todos los países y un camino para avanzar en esa dirección es promover la construcción y el fortalecimiento de sistemas de protección social universales.

In the poor and drought-prone rural district of Dhar in Madhya Pradesh, India, Gyandoot has tried to make government services more accessible to villagers through information and communications technology (ICT) since January 2000. Two recent surveys of this e-government project allow us to evaluate whether the local population is benefiting. Main findings are that service satisfaction is quite high, but usage is low, and Gyandoot is not reaching the poorest people. We conclude that much of the potential benefits of e-government are not being realized. Lessons for ICT projects that intend to benefit the rural poor include the use of appropriate technology, implementation of the project by agents who have incentives to serve the poor, community participation and ownership, availability of pro-poor services, and campaigns to raise awareness. Copyright (c) 2005 The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Information Technologies and International Development.

We use the Dirac operator technique to establish sharp distance estimates for compact spin manifolds under lower bounds on the scalar curvature in the interior and on the mean curvature of the boundary. In the situations we consider, we thereby give refined answers to questions on metric inequalities recently proposed by Gromov. This includes optimal estimates for Riemannian bands and for the long neck problem. In the case of bands over manifolds of non-vanishing A-genus, we establish a rigidity result stating that any band attaining the predicted upper bound is isometric to a particular warped product over some spin manifold admitting a parallel spinor. Furthermore, we establish scalar-and mean curvature extremality results for certain log-concave warped products. The latter includes annuli in all simply-connected space forms. On a technical level, our proofs are based on new spectral estimates for the Dirac operator augmented by a Lipschitz potential together with local boundary conditions.