The+Cyber+Optimistic+View+of+Breaching+Indias+Digital+Divide

=The Cyber Optimistic View of Breaching India's Digital Divide=

The Digital Divide is an important and omnipresent issue in the world today. India is a classic example of a country which has taken a quantum leap forward in diminishing the Digital Divide within the nation. Only a small portion of people in India have access to Information Technologies. About 70% of the people still live in villages, and 40% of Indians are illiterate. (Alterezo, 2004) A villager in a remote rural area in India would have to bike several miles to look for a phone and waste over half his day’s wage to contact a relative abroad. At the same time, some of the most successful and advanced software companies are in Bangalore, and India is the hub for booming high-tech computer industries. IT is India’s fastest growing sector, and walk into the software company in Bangalore, you feel you are in the US. It’s hard to believe that there are such extremes in India. The greatest challenge is to merge these two sides of India into one, to introduce the rural to IT, to bridge that large socio-economic gap. Recently, many attempts to bridge this gap are taking place. Projects like these are done by charities, by governmental organizations or rich businessman who want to invest in the talent of Indians to advance Information technology overall, and who recognize that India is a “fertile ground” for many budding IT brain boxes in the future.

The Computer Kiosk Phenomenon
The catalyst for bridging the digital divide has been the Computer kiosk phenomenon. Computer kiosks are very successful, as India already has 7,000 and growing as we speak. The giant company Indian Tobacco Co. has funded more than 4,000 kiosks so far. (Business Week, 2004) Kiosks are the hub of all the activity, and encourage farmers to use them for e-commerce, transactions, and communication to name a few. In Bangalore for example (in the State Karnataka), there is an administration office with a computer terminal where nearby villagers can come and see computerized copies of sale deeds, and other information regarding their crops. For just thirty cents, they can get a foolproof trustworthy printed copy of their records. This has changed so many things for the better, because earlier the deeds were controlled by powerful villager accountants. Bribing and corruption would take place, including inter-caste cheating such as tricking lower caste farmers into giving away their land. This made it harder to prove ownership of land and people had limited access to the records. The Karnataka state government commenced a program five years ago to “computerize the land records of 6.7 million farmers in 30,000 villages.” (Business week,2004) Now, all the land and property information are recorded and filed, even in the local language (Kannada) through government owned computer kiosks across the state. This makes it accessible to the local farmers and brings rural workers in touch with Information Technology. In rural India, this computerization of land records is a major revolution. This gives equal access to information, “a lower-caste person now has the same privileges as an upper-caste person”. (Rajiv Chawla, as quoted in Business week, 2004) Moving to the south, to a union territory called Pondicherry, we can see another example where the knowledge of IT within rural farmers has saved the day: a computer link up has been arranged in a fishing village in Pondicherry. Every morning, a trained villager accesses the latest weather report online to match the specific coast and with a loudspeaker, broadcasts the report over the village. Earlier, weather reports came only by crackly and unclear radio, and by then it was too late when storms came suddenly and fishermen drowned.

Improving Language Barriers:
Hewlett Packard (HP) labs have been set up earlier this year in Bangalore, and are making products to suit the rural market. Their aim is to offer technology in Indian languages, making it more accessible for the rural population who don’t speak English, to make it affordable, and improve connectivity choices. The Microsoft Corporation is integrating with the State government and starting a ‘Bhasha Lab’ (Language Lab) in Gujarat to create several programs including a word processor and interface in Gujarati. In an attempt to glocalise software, they are targeting physically challenged youths and farmers as well. Bhasha labs are slowly expanding in India to other parts such as Tamil Nadu-the south, and Haryana-the north. The availability of Indian fonts is sure to accelerate the usage of IT in rural areas who can now send emails in their respective languages. The results of a nation wide survey conducted by Microsoft proves that expanding the Indian market is possible only if they bring out softwares in regional Indian languages. (Ahmedabad Newsline, 2005)

Infrastructure:
To improve connections and access, the communications infrastructure itself needs to be ameliorated. Public systems in India are slow and unmanageable. To bring computers to the masses, one needs electricity and a (good) phone connection for internet. Public sector projects such as Media Lab Asia (MLA)-based in Bombay but organized by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)-is arranging a wireless, 802.11 standard-compliant network with Internet and voice connection in rural areas. Starting at Kanpur and extending till Lucknow and 25 villages on the way, it serves as a wonderful information vehicle. MLA has also set up ‘info-thelas’, mobile carts with computers mounted on a bicycle with antennas and an all-day battery, around villages. Moreover, the Chennai based IIT in south India, TeNeT( the Telecommunications and Computer Networks) has used its Wirless Local Loop (WLL) technology to offer internet and voice services to over 700,000 rural Indians and 250 computer kiosks, confirms the head of TeNeT, Ashok Jhunjhunwala. Now instead of the common man having to wait in long lines to vote, or fill in an application form or ask for market information, everything is available to them a click away. (Ribeiro, John, 2003)

As Nasscom president Kiran Karnik says, “We have to figure a way to take these sparks and turn them into a prairie fire." (As quoted in Business week, 2004). In View of the cyber optimist, efforts to bridge the digital divide can be done and cumulative efforts can contribute to diminishing the Digital divide in India today.


 * Bibliography:**

1) Alterezo, Debating India, //The Economic Times//,Saturday 10th July 2004 from: http://india.eu.org/1963.html

2) Kripalani, Manjeet, The Digital Village, //Business Week Online//, June 28th 2004 from http://businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_26/b3889003.htm

3) BBC News World Edition, India’s digital divide, Sunday 25th May 2003, from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/2932758.sm

4) Ribeiro, John, India tackes the digital divide, 5th February 2003, from:

http://www.itworld.com/Tech/2987/020514digitaldivide/

5) Ahmedabad News line, Microsoft goes Gujrati to bridge digital divide, Sunday November 13th, 2005, from:

http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=156840

6) Ishaq, Ashfaq, On the Global digital Divide, //Finance Development magazine (IMF),// September 2001, Volume 38, Number 3, from: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2001/09/ishaq.htm

7) Business Wire, Sify Opens 2,000th iWay Cyber Cafe in New Delhi; Bridges the Digital Divide in India Using State-of-the-Art Technology**,** //Business Wire//, August 20th, 2004 from: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_2004_August_20/ai_n6161260

8) Bagla, Gunjan, Bringing IT to Rural India One Village at a Time, //Trendlines-CIO magazine//, March 1, 2005, from:

http://www.cio.com/archive/030105/tl_divide.html

9) Bhatnagar, Subhash, Digital Divide: Where does India Stand? And the way Forward, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, February 26th, 2004 from:

http://www.iimahd.ernet.in/egov/ifip/april2004/DigitalDivide.pdf