India and the Digital Divide

Amidst all the hue and cry over slowing down of the global economy and all the hullaboo over the crashing stock markets, the tumbling share prices, the hugely talked about sub prime crisis, we forget that section of the society that is least affected with the all these changes in the global markets. This section of people in our society which we refer to as BPL or below poverty line are the people to which these huge and complex terms mean nothing more than a few letters put together with no meaning whatsoever. The governments have come and gone with their promises of making poverty free India a reality but they have failed to do so in pursuit achieving their petty desires and rather left India in a state of corruption.

Even after more than 50 years of Independence India still has the world's largest number of poor people in a single country .Of its nearly 1 billion inhabitants, an estimated 260.3 million are below the poverty line, of which 193.2 million are in the rural areas and 67.1 million are in urban areas. More than 75% of poor people reside in villages. Poverty level is not uniform across India. The poverty level is below 10% in states like Delhi, Goa, and Punjab etc whereas it is below 50% in Bihar (43) and Orissa (47). It is between 30-40% in Northeastern states of Assam, Tripura, and Mehgalaya and in states of Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh.

One issues that has raised serious concerns is the digital divide that is further increasing the gap between the have and the have not’s. Possibly the only visible demerit of the technological advancement i.e. the digital divide is spreading its roots deep into our economy.

The extent to which the current Telecom companies have penetrated into our rural areas by providing cheap handsets and connectivity is commendable but still we're still very far from the dream of achieving even 50 percent of what connectivity exists in the developed world. Our Tele-density i.e. no. of people connected via a telephone or cellphone stands at 20.52 per hundred people as compared to the 70-80 in the developed world. An observation that has been made is that for every 1 percent increase in Tele-density, the GDP growth rate goes up 0.6 percent. So we can safely conclude that how important is Tele-density for the growth and prosperity of our nation and hence for the people living below the poverty line.

Another important issue is the access to the most humongous source of information that mankind has seen i.e. the Internet. India has close to 60,000,000 internet users today. The number may appear huge but the catch is that its just 5.2 percent of the total Indian population. This figure stands as high as 84% in the developed world. International Data

Corporation estimates that approximately 160 exabytes (160 followed by 18 zeros!!!) of digital information was created, captured, and replicated worldwide in 2006.But if it doesnt reach the person who can use it to climb up a few rungs closer to success and to a life without poverty, then there exists no meaning for that information.

These figures point at the massive gap which looks almost insurmountable. Only the people with basic necessities in place have the time and resources to buy a computer to access internet or visit a cybercafe for that matter. For people struggling to get just two meals a day, it’s just another word. So we can infer that this digital gap is actually making the rich richer and the poor poorer.

The only way we can try to bridge this gap is to see that the knowledge and the technology trickles down to those who need it the most. It is ours as well as the Government's responsibility to see that the technological evolution of the country can be used for the benefit of people who want to learn but are denied the opportunity because of their current abysmal status. The government needs to focus on providing computer literacy across the country to each child so that after an initial exposure he/she can build up on what he has already learnt and craft a good future for himself.

Bill gates once said "If you are born poor, it’s not your fault. But if you die poor, then you yourself are to blame". I wish for a future where the same would be true in the Indian context.