Understanding capabilities through everyday practice: the case of a weather information system for farmers in West Bengal

In this paper we seek to employ the Capability Approach to evaluate the development impact of a weather information system in West Bengal, India. Responding to the challenges of operationalising the CA, we have adopted a focus on social practice as a basis for identifying capability enhancement among the participants in the system. We find that practice as an epistemological lens can be an appropriate way to fill in the analytical gap between ICTs as "goods and services" and their role in enabling valued "beings and doings".