INFO AGE: The Digital Divide

Information
and knowledge have now become the key to economic prosperity.
The Internet has ushered in the "Information
Age", signifying the period of greatest potential for
wealth creation in history. It has rocked the way we deliver and
receive information and the way we use it for business,
entertainment, planning, and living. It is widely acknowledged
that Information Communication Technologies (ICTs)–television/radio,
telephone, computer, and the Internet–hold the promise of
local and global information-sharing needed for sustainable
economic development and wealth creation. 

"Haves"
Vs "Have-nots"

Unfortunately,
only 15 percent of the world's population are believed to have
access to the Internet. Forget surfing the Web, more than 80
percent of people in the world are still believed to have never
even heard of a dial tone. And the gap between the information
"haves" and "have-nots" is widening. That is
called the "digital divide".

In his speech at Telecom
'99, Kofi Anan, UN Secretary General, had warned of the danger
of excluding the world's poor from the Information Revolution.
"People lack many things: jobs, shelter, food, health care,
and drinking water. Today, being cut off from basic
telecommunications services is a hardship almost as acute as
these other deprivations, and may indeed reduce the chances of
finding remedies to them." Less than one percent of people
in South Asia have Internet access even though they constitute
one-fifth of the world's population.

Examples
Galore

The
impact of communications and the Internet is not mere rhetoric.
There are many examples from the developing world of how
technology helped individuals to prosper.

InMorocco, where
women play a vital role in earning livelihood for the families,
Fadma now sells her wares in the global marketplace, earning
enough money to take care of herself and her two daughters. She
is part of a group of local weavers who sell their rugs through
a site called Virtual Souk. Around 75—80 percent of the
artisan partners of Virtual Souk are women. The project, which
employs 775 artisans in Morocco, Tunisia and Lebanon, works
through NGOs to avoid middlemen and delivers 65-80 percent of
money earned back to the artisans.

In India, a large majority
of rural women have never seen a telephone or television, and
with literacy rate ranging between 8-10 percent, the Internet
Revolution is yet to touch their daily lives. Yet we have the
example of a rural embroideress, Maniben, from Kutch in Gujarat.
A non-profit organization, with help from the National Institute
of Fashion Technology (NIFT), featured her mirror-work
embroidered tie on its web site–peoplelink.org. Maniben
received orders from UK to make "Millennium" ties.

Also in India, National
Dairy Development Board (NDDB) is helping co-operative unions
across the country to set up computer systems, connecting the
villagers who sell milk to the union office and the union office
itself to NDDB. The Board is going to 1,000 villages thus
avoiding the middleman through use of computers.

At the milk production
centre in Anand, Gujarat, women take milk to a weigh-bridge.
There the milk is weighed, the fat quantity assessed, and the
payment immediately calculated by the computer. Earlier
middlemen could cheat saying the fat content was low. Records–right
from quantities sold to payrolls–are automatically maintained
and are tamper-proof compared to the time-consuming ledger work
in the past.

A vet in Tiruchi in Tamil
Nadu is computerizing all details of animal and poultry
diseases. This will be available in booths across the villages
in the area, so that people know exactly what should be done for
prevention and cure. In Andhara Pradesh (AP), a professor is
working on the prototype of software on animal health care to
dispel misinformation and provide villagers with information on
animal diseases. Information dissemination would become simple
and speedy, with every village in AP expected to have an
Internet booth soon.

Government plays a key
role in taking IT to the masses. In AP, for instance, land
records have been totally computerized and every district and
village is expected to be networked in the future. A
videoconference network connects the chief minister with 25 key
locations in the state. Other states are following quickly.

There are many cellular
operators in India who are implementing schemes based on the
experience of "GrameenPhone" of Bangladesh to bring
the benefits of communications to rural folk.

Role of
Education

There
are many instances of housewives aged over 60 who want to
familiarize themselves with computers. All the above examples
can serve as benchmarks or models to help more people to benefit
from the Information Revolution. Governments have a big role to
play here–not only to facilitate through appropriate policies
and infrastructure but also through education. In particular,
now the Digital Education.

Help from
within

It
is being increasingly felt that simply pouring more money into
developing countries is not the way to re-establish social
equilibrium. The answer is now believed to lie in knowledge,
partnership, and opportunity brought about by this new
(knowledge and digital) revolution. A recent World Bank study
entitled "Voices of the Poor"–involving 60,000
people in 60 countries–showed that people living in poverty
were not looking for charity or financial handouts. "What
they want is a chance for themselves, for their children, for
women in the family. And they want to ensure that they have
self-respect and opportunity to grow and move forward," the
study points out.

Countries that do not
embrace IT and its attendant challenges are likely to fall back
in their development programmes.

Malaysian Prime Minister
Mahathir remarked, "It will take a miracle to prevent a
massive widening of the knowledge and economic gap between the
rich and the poor in the years ahead. The Information Age holds
out the promise of a New World of shared prosperity, of global
renaissance. At the same time it also holds out the danger of
economic exploitation, societal devastation, and a new era of
imperialism and colonialism. We need to bridge the economic and
development gap, the information and knowledge gap."

The key factors to bridge
the gap are universal access–not only to communication, but
also to Internet (and whatever needed, including hardware),
digital education, and content development based on local needs.

Turning IT
into Digital Opportunity

I recently
attended a meeting of the World Economic Forum Task Force on
Digital Divide. It was generally felt that there is an urgent
need to turn IT into "Digital Opportunity" to reap
DIGITAL DIVIDEND. Where DIVIDEND means DIVIDE +
END.