The telecentre movement in India can be traced back to1998 when the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation started three Village Knowledge Centres in Pondicherry with the support from International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). The number of telecentres have also grown over the years making India home to one of the largest number of telecentre related initiatives based on public access to technology approach.

With this backdrop in mind and with a vision to create a knowledge society in rural India through the use of telecentres, Prof M S Swaminathan, the man behind Green Revolution and one of the architects of resurgent India, conceived 'Mission 2007: Every Village a Knowledge Centre', a multi-stakeholder partnership to empower the rural communities with the power of ICTs. The aim of the 'Mission 2007: Every Village a Knowledge Centre' is to bridge the urban rural digital divide and to harness information and communication technologies (ICTs) for addressing the major problems of rural India like poverty, illiteracy, ill-health, and low farm productivity. A National Alliance for Mission 2007 was formed in 2003 in order to strengthen the movement bringing together various stakeholders. Started with just 80 partners in 2003, today the movement has more than 412 partners. The following grap will explain the increasing trend of partners.

With the raising skepticism in 2005, the number of partners have shown a slight decline. So, the alliance partners, on August 2007 rechristened this movement as Grameen Gyan Abhiyan (Rural Knowledge Movement), a national movement for knowledge empowerment of rural families. The Mission turned into a Movement and the efforts intensified further. With the Government of India's National e-Governance Plan and Honorable President of India's announcement to setup 240,000 Bharat Nirman Common Services Centres in India has brought much hope to the Grameen Gyan Abhiyan (Rural Knowledge Movement). The increasing number of partners from different domain is the best example to support this argument.