From digital divide to social empowerment

V Ramaswamy
Looking at the socio-economic picture of India, it is clear that there is a large segment of our people who are entirely outside of the IT revolution. The existing social structure ensures that such people live out their lives without any access to the technology, its instruments, its education. Existing socio-economic disparities are magnified, as the new technology is embraced by those with access to good education, exposure and social confidence, skills, capital etc. This has given rise to the term "digital divide". The term suggests that the world shall henceforth comprise of those who are part of the digital revolution, and those who are left out of this. The former would have a stake in the emerging future, while the latter are consigned to a sub-human status.
One section is entering the post-digital age, in terms of cognitive development, while the other languishes in the pre-literate era. Increasingly, the common space binding together our people in a shared world - is vanishing.
The response
There could be two kinds of response to this situation.
The first, a normative one, an idealistic view, calling for social justice, equity, opportunity etc. Actually, this is not simply idealistic, but also quite realistic. No one thinks very much about the pernicious effect of socio-economic disparities, and the social instability, violence etc that results. Since we do ultimately coexist in the same geographical space, in the long run effects do catch up with causes.
The second approach, is a more practical one. This looks at the distorted nature of the IT sector in India and advocates a drastic reorganisation. In a manner that breaks the nexus between social structure and technology access. Where technology access becomes the means to change the social structure.
The application of the technology and its impact is determined by the existing social structure. However, the same technology may also be subversive of the existing structure.
Mass computing
Notwithstanding the growth of PC use in India over the last decade and more, this is still something touching a miniscule part of the country's people or economic activities. While improvements have definitely taken place, in terms of electrification and spread of the telephone and television network, there still remains the immense metro / urban - rural gap in infrastructure.
Even within this dichotomy, there is a further dichotomy. No one looks at computing in the context of the whole spectrum of economic activities - especially on the humbler side. Even as computer-use grows, computing as such remains a casualty. But the scope for mass computing, as applied to diverse professions and activities, including many humble ones, remains an untapped field. This calls for greater communication with users and customer-specific applications and solutions. Most significantly, it calls for marketing strategies that break the socially defined barriers of communication. Even within metro cities, PC vendors do not think of selling to modest retail outlets, small businesses, run by unsophisticated people who do not belong to the English-medium domain. But in its own interest, the IT sector has to break out of this syndrome.
This is something that could well be a means to enhance livelihood, employment, enterprise, productivity, efficiency and profit. Most fundamentally, it could bring dignity to the down-trodden.
Looking at the technology itself, and its applications, it is clear that this could actually be a powerful means for positive change, in the direction of empowerment of the poor. But for this potential to be realised, and over a mass scale, a number of major steps have to be taken. These would go against the grain of the predominant orientation of the computers-related industry.
This then poses a tremendous challenge, to the whole field of information technology, as well as to social thinkers and planners. The longer this challenge is ignored, the deeper and more immutable the digital divide.
There have been a number of visionary experiments and small-scale efforts along these lines, internationally as well as in India. These have only affirmed the revolutionary empowering potential of the computer. But there is now a need to move from the stage of small experiments to actions at a mass scale. Programmes of socio-economic empowerment have also to be integrated with "digital empowerment ".
Recycling hardware
Keeping the focus on real computing applications (rather than machines to sell), in a real user context, will necessarily mean that a whole new operation has to be established. To make available affordable computing hardware and software, which will significantly empower a range of economic actors who are presently outside the purview of IT.
Where do the old machines go? In a poor country like India, which is capital scarce, can we afford to waste the valuable social capital that usable computing hardware represents? Recycling hardware, within an approach of developing and presenting use-focused computing applications, is a key challenge.
A match has to be made - between potential users of computing, and computing equipment. This calls for people, information and capital.
Computer education
Once again, if one keeps the entire society in view, then there is not much to be said about computer education in India. Illiteracy, school drop-outs, school and university graduates who are unemployable for all practical purposes - all this casts a very dark shadow. What is the way out?
How long does it take to bridge the chasm between illiteracy, or limited education, and computer-literacy? What are the cognitive foundations of computer application? Most significantly, how can one somehow bring about access and exposure to computers for the deprived?
Even today, the commonest "social welfare" intervention in urban slum areas is to impart tailoring skills to poor women and provide them with sewing machines. But could one imagine imparting basic computer education to some of these very women, and distributing recycled PCs, with which a range of home or workplace-based data-entry, processing, storage, communications, service and web-related operations can be undertaken?
Can one conceive of huge databases, all valuable to specific users, that are maintained by neo-literates? Consider the employment generated in hardware assembly and maintenance, customer relations, software adaptation.
Can one envision computer-based networks spreading through the interstices of the city, binding together deprived people in a movement for empowerment?
All bringing income, dignity, and parity with the emerging world?
Thus a second major area of challenge is mass computer education. In turn, this presumes the recycling operation.
Institutional infrastructure
When one talks about any kind of change, one should think about the ownership of this process. Who is responsible? This leads us to the third, and perhaps most crucial link of the chain: grassroot-level institutions.
We need to build institutions and institutional capabilities, to work with IT, among the deprived sections. In urban slum neighbourhoods for instance. Not self-serving institutions, but institutions which act as resource units and catalysts for empowerment of large numbers of humble citizens. Institutions which will work, patiently, and with vision, amidst difficult conditions, and nurture a generation of post-digital divide learners and workers.
Can the socially enlightened application of technology be used as a powerful means for the substantive empowerment of the weaker sections, and thus bring to life and vitality the whole social fabric of the nation?