The Digital Challenge: Information Technology in the Development Context by Shirin Madon S Krishna

Author:Shirin Madon, S Krishna [Shirin Madon, S Krishna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781138716452
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2019-11-11T00:00:00+00:00

3. Realizing The Potential of ICT is not an Automatic Process

Realizing the poverty-reducing potential of ICT is not guaranteed. It requires attentive public policy formulation and careful project design. Insufficient information and communication infrastructure, high access costs, and illiteracy limit the benefits of ICT to the better off urban segments of the population to the detriment of the poor and rural areas. General theory and observation of the Indian experience illustrate these dynamics.

3.1 A Model on the Diffusion of ICT

A model developed by Chris Scott, building on earlier work by Keith Griffin (1979), shows why the poor and the rich use different communications techniques and how the nature of technical change has until now been biased towards the rich, widening the digital divide. Since the value of time is low for the poor –due to underemployment– and the cost of ICT capital is high, when ICT consists of oral and written communication on the one hand and fixed line telephony on the other, the poor tend to communicate orally. The rich, who face opposite constraints, choose to communicate via fixed line telephony, which is relatively capitalintensive. When mobile telephony and the Internet become available, both of which require more capital per unit of information communicated than any of the existing techniques, the rich switch from communicating by fixed telephony to using the Internet, while the poor continue to communicate orally. Therefore, the model has two implications for a pro-poor ICT policy. First, the relative price of capital for communications purposes needs to be reduced for the poor. Extending the electricity grid to low-income areas, selectively and temporarily subsidizing poor users, and improving access to training are essential. Second, the focus of research and development in ICT has to favor poor-user friendly hardware and software (Pigato 2001).

3.2 Access to ICT in Rural India

In India, even where telephone lines have reached rural areas through the introduction of Public Call Offices (PCOs), the poor have very limited access to ICT. As revealed by a recent survey conducted in five villages in Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh (Marwah, in Pigato 2001), only radios are owned by a majority of poor households. Televisions, telephones and newspapers are available to the majority of households on a shared basis. Very few families have shared access to a computer or Internet connection, and some households have never viewed television, read a newspaper or used a telephone (see Table 11.1). Surveys also suggest that the poor rely on information from informal networks of trusted family, friends and local leaders, but these networks do not adequately satisfy their information needs (Pigato 2001). This indicates that ICT could play a pivotal role in improving access to information by the poor. However, it remains very difficult for people with low levels of education to reap the full benefits of new technologies, including wide access to knowledge and information.

Table 11.1 Access to sources of information and communications for the rural poor in India

Source

Personal ownership(%)

Shared / communal (%)

Not available (%)

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