The “Emerging Market - ala India” story has been around for some time. But the truth is that it is not only restricted to India. Lot of amazing stories are being unfolded in Bolivia, Egypt and Cambodia alike. But may be… just may be..there is a little difference as to how the story of India is playing out. Possible reasons could be the open democratic environment, policies based on a wobbly framework that takes its turns appeasing mass population and corporate lobbies depending on the ‘opportunities’ present! Reforms, unfriendly to masses, often result in a peculiar sporadic form of defiant activism, which in turn bring about unprecedented optimism. Whatever be the cause or effect, there is something happening at the grass roots that merits attention and deserves a discourse.

After many entrepreneurial and academic stop-starts as ‘emerging market’ experiments, finally a definite direction is emerging that is effectively pulling masses out of the clutches of poverty, creating opportunities for viable business models and most notably creating unprecedented ambition and optimism among the rural communities!. Recent example is Farmers in western India deciding to put up a protest against corporate land grabbing and start a whole Special Economic Zone by themselves!! One really wonders what will be the determinants of commercial success of these especially when venturing into segments where these communities have no previous knowledge, e.g. manufacturing. But without a doubt, there will be new chapters written in the science of competitiveness.
To sketch out what is happening in the non-urban India, we may very well cite the unimaginable rise in the e-commerce transactions (about 60% in all of India) taking place from the small towns and large rural centers, farmers opting for smart card based insurance, dispensed from rural ATMs and community based trade co-operatives, going all out to woo the buyers in the developed market industries. Are we soon going to see the actual implementation of ‘Social stock exchange’ famously propounded by Mohammed Yunus of Grameen Bank? We don’t know at this moment, but these movements seem highly poised to capture the opportunity of the moment.
How will these communities become active members of mainstream commerce. What is their credential to stand against the sophisticated global business giants or even the local ones. What mental models and behavioral or attitudinal dispositions towards technology and ‘information objects’ do these communities manifest in general? Few key observations from the project work rural India, that I have been fortunate to be a part of:

• They exhibit a collective identity that gives them mutual strength and at the same time builds an effective social capital
• Their experiences are day-to-day learning based, not shaped through formal training
• Low on deciphering complex taxonomies but very high on grasping the functional aspect of the knowledge (quick to implement too)
• Cognition in general very distributed, based on physical artifacts and trusted entities (person or object)
• Non-literacy is a big barrier, they adopt many ways to circumvent the shortcomings, e.g. appointing the only school going village boy as the cooperative spokesperson!
• Tasks are carried out in a highly social manner, not from an individualistic point of view
  See Publication: Understanding and designing for intermediated information tasks in India by Tapan Parikh, J.S.; Kaushik Ghosh