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You are too good! I dont understand, why our bureaucrats and the people who ‘rule’ India doesnt understand this basic thing. For them it seems that the PC is the wonder pill thats going to wipe out all the problems of people everywhere. Maybe these folks have not given up their herd mentality and cannot put enough thought into what really solves the problem.

Some great arguments in this post. Only wish the politicians and bureaucrats were listening.

By the way, given his outlook, why did CJ bother to make the trip to Bhopal?

This was awesome. You really hit the nail on the head. There is too much ‘crap’ going around on bridging the digital divide. Going a bit further from cities makes you realize that we’ve not made much progress at all. Having 0.1% of our people writing software and far fewer number of people solving complex and ‘ambiguous’ problems gave us this false sense of progress. We started believing that having more people writing programs and surfing the web will solve all our problems. Thank you for the eye opener.

Surojit

Aside from that, one needs to walk in Mumbai to know what a giant toilet this city has become because there is no civic plan to handle the housing needs of the burgeoning rural population who come here looking for work. This governmental apathy will be at the root a terrible epidemic very soon.

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a long time ago an friend of mine, Suresh, who was interested in walking into the jungles of India to watch bison and tiger, asked me while we were chatting at Coffee House – “Do you know why they started ‘Project Tiger’? Why didn’t they go for trying to preserve the many other species of animals which are nearer to extinction in India?” I, of course, had never even thought of giving this question a thought!

“That’s because, a Tiger is right on top of the food chain. To get the Tiger to survive, you have to ensure that everything in the pyramid below it also has to survive. This includes all the other animals, re-forestation, reclaiming lands, educating villagers and alternative solutions to prevent deforestation”, says Suresh.

Wow, I thought. I’d never thought of it that way. But anyway I asked, “And don’t you think it had anything to do with the Tiger being a much more glamarous role model for preservation?”

“That may be”, Suresh said. “But that’s was just an opportunity, waiting to be utilised!”

I think of the digital divide along similar lines. Yes, internet access is not the only thing required, and certainly not the first thing required. But to get internet access started (and more importantly, maintained!), you have to have power lines set up, you have to have telecommunication links set up, you have to have basic infrastructure. Without all this, internet access is just a waste of money.

And just as the confluence of ‘fate’ and ‘opportunity’ in the case of Project Tiger, I feel that we should let the Indian politicians harp over the digital divide and try and get it across as soon and as fast as possible. Let’s grant them their last boast. Because once they’ve got the ball rolling, once they’ve got infrastructure set up and people KNOW that alternatives indeed exist, that will be the death knell of corrupt politicians in India. And they won’t even know what hit them! All they’d think is, hey this is what I started!!

– abhijit.

I have also worked in the area of ICT and Development, and read many papers on bridging the digital divide, ICT revolution , yada yada yada…and at this point it seems like jargon. There isn’t much hard evidence yet to back claims that ICT is this great enabler….but I think where ICT can make an impact is in making service delivery more effecient. Yes, poor people need sanitation, clean drinking water and access to health care but in many developing countries the government fails to deliver essential services to its citizens due to problems such as: leakages/corruption, weak incentives or a lack of articulated demand. ICTs, can make service providers more accountable, help build citizen voice and minimize information asymmetries and lack of transparency in the whole service delivery process.