community networks
community networks
Sarbani Banerjee Belur
Sarbani Banerjee Belur
Dr. Sarbani Banerjee Belur, is currently the Asia Regional Coordinator for Association for Progressive Communications (APC) for the Community Networks Connecting the Unconnected project. She is also the senior research scientist hosted by the Spoken Tutorial project at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay in Mumbai, India. She has been working in the domain of rural connectivity for the past six years and has been associated with the Gram Marg project in the Department of Electrical Engineering at IIT Bombay. Her current work involves increasing digital outreach to remote and rural areas of India, deployment of new technology alternatives for the middle- and last-mile internet connectivity, development of sustainable models supporting Public-Private-Panchayat Partnership, seeding the growth of community networks, gender and access and also developing community technologies and impact assessment studies of connectivity in the lives of people. The impact studies that she focuses on are based on gender, social and economic impacts of connectivity.
In depth
Community networks as infrastructures of resistance: Re-centring the needs of women and communities in technology-making and connectivity
This article situates the role of community networks that strive to deliver on technology’s promise of greater gender equality, making the case for recentring the needs of women and communities in technology-making and connectivity, as infrastructures of resistance in times of crisis.
In depth
New age women: Women and their approach towards internet connectivity in rural India
Availability and affordability of the internet have a major impact on whether women are able to access and use the internet. In this article we explore what happens when community networks bring the internet closer to women and the small and big ways in which this changes their lives.
