Digital technology in its current corporate form is irrelevant to a wide cross-section of the populace. What can be done to salvage it and orient it towards the objectives of development?
The digital hype in South Asia has been around for close to a decade now and there is no end in sight. Institutions, agencies and organisations concerned with digital policy, implementation, lobbying, education and dissemination have mushroomed across the technologically-arid landscape of the Subcontinent, promising "giant leaps" and cutting-edge developments that claim to bring all manner of electronic conveniences to "village South Asia". The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), whose annual Human Development Reports (HDR) over the last few years have provided the clearest indicators of social and economic disparities between and within countries, is another recent high-profile convert to the digital cause. Thus, even those who deal in poverty eradication and sustainable development have now come around to accepting the technocratic route to their objectives.
Yet these grandiose digital dreams come up against some very real problems. Minimally, participation in basic digital activity requires an electric socket and plug, some electricity, a computer of any brand or model, functional literacy in English or another European language, plus a suite of software applications. If this participation is to be upgraded to the most rudimentary network activity, additional requirements include a modem, a phone line and an e-correspondent with access to the same facilities. As against these requirements, consider the actual realities of 'average South Asia', leave alone 'village South Asia', which harbours the bulk of the region's poverty and undernourishment.
In India, the most digitally advanced country in the region, as much as 42 percent of the population earns an annual income of only USD 365 a year (HDR 2001), which is approximately the price of a personal computer. When close to half the country's population just about survives a whole year on the sale price of one PC, for the average Indian even rudimentary hardware and software remain unaffordable. Electricity is a scarce commodity in the Subcontinent and supplies mainly urban and industrial regions. And, for a great many rural citizens, even getting hold of a remote e-correspondent is not as easy as it may sound to a habitué of the anonymous cyber-chat networks. Most rural inhabitants in the Subcontinent cannot digitally communicate even personal information for want of basic literacy.