Bridging the digital divide

India is among the underperformers on access to Information and Communications Technology

One of the parameters of assessing societal development of a country is the extent to which there has been penetration of information and communications technology (ICT) through the Internet, mobile phone subscriptions or through the degree of press freedom given to the journalists, news organisations and citizens of a country. Access to ICT also gains relevance in the newly adopted Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for 2030 of the United Nations, with greater relevance for the least developed countries to be able to provide universal and affordable access to the Internet to its people.

Over-performers, underperformers

Though ICT has promoted development across various dimensions of society from connecting individuals to spreading across businesses, and governments, there exists a digital divide in its accessibility between the high income and low income countries, with high income countries typically showing greater penetration of digital technology as compared to less developed countries. While in high income countries such as Finland, Norway, Denmark, Netherlands and Sweden, over 90 per cent of the population is using the Internet, in lower income countries such as Afghanistan, Sub-Saharan African countries such as Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Malawi, less than 10 per cent of the population uses it. Similarly, with regard to the extent of mobile penetration, Sub-Saharan Africa has the lowest mobile penetration of 73 per cent, compared to 98 per cent penetration in high income countries (World Development Report 2016).

Given a high degree of correlation between the economic progress of a country and its access to ICT, there are countries which have over-performed relative to their economic peers in providing digital technology. One such country worth mentioning here is Costa Rica, which is the world’s top over-performer, known for its communication technology and also press freedom. Similarly, there are countries which have underperformed among their income peers on access to information and communication. For instance, Cuba, which has the lowest number of mobile phone subscriptions and lowest press freedom index, has been the most underperforming country on access to information and communication. Further, two of the world’s most populated countries — India and China — are also among the few underperformers on access to ICT. India, which has been appreciated globally for providing IT services, faces a huge digital divide, having a relatively low percentage of population with access to the Internet. In 2014, it had only about 18 people per 100 using the Internet (World Bank Data). China on the other hand has a very weak press freedom index, resulting in its overall low performance on access to ICT. Apart from the digital divide existing between countries, there also exists a gap in adoption of digital technology across different demographic groups within the country.

The World Development Report 2016 highlights such differences in accessibility to the Internet in Africa, where gaps arise out of differences in factors such as income, location, gender and age. For instance, greater access to the Internet is seen in the top 60 per cent of the population based on income distribution compared to the bottom 40 per cent. Further, women use less digital technology compared to men, and gaps are even greater between the youth (20 per cent) and the matured population (8 per cent).

Increasing access to ICT

To be able to promote greater social progress in the world, it is imperative to increase access to information and communication technology universally. With the world presently scoring 62.99 on a scale of 100 in access to ICT, higher overall social progress could be achieved by overcoming the digital divides that exist between the countries regardless of their level of economic progress.

One of the ways to bring about greater penetration of digital technology in society is to make it more affordable. This could be realised through support from multilateral organisations to the underperforming countries by helping them build their communication infrastructure. Moreover, promoting greater market competition in Internet provision and encouraging public-private partnerships in building ICT infrastructure could increase the affordability of digital technology and thereby improve access to it. Further, digital divides could be bridged to an extent by bringing greater awareness among citizens about the use of digital technology which could help in reducing information inequality in society.

While increasing penetration of digital technology by bridging the existing digital divides is associated with greater social progress of a country, it is also essential to build up the corresponding human capital necessary for making optimal use of the technology. ICT can benefit the economy through increasing productivity gains only if people having access to the technology also have the requisite skills for making optimal use of it.

Amit Kapoor is Chair of the Institute for Competitiveness and Deepti Mathur is part of the team working on the Social Progress Index for India.

Keywords: Information and Communications Technology, World Development Report 2016, social progress, Internet penetration in India

Source:The Hindu,  28-07-2016

Irom Sharmila, Enrich Indian Democracy





Irom Sharmila is 44 years old. For around 37% of her life, she has not had a proper meal. She does not have a home, where she can cook, read, move around, have a family . She lives in jail in Imphal, Manipur, which is politely called a `special ward', where she is force-fed, nasally: the authorities do not want the public outrage and rebellion that Gandhi threatened to materialise, with his fasts during the freedom struggle, without any mechanism for force-feeding. Sharmila is a cult today . Many profit from cults. But now, she will enter electoral politics.From exerting moral pressure on the state at one remove, she will move to exerting pressure on the state directly . Of course, Sharmila will win any poll. But for which organisation? Eve ry regime in India has let Manipur and the northeast down. There will be plenty of `welfare' leeches hounding her, whose fortunes have been created from her mi sery. She will be a heroine in electoral battle, a winner, but a lonely one -unless she joins hands with the larger struggle across India for full realisation of democracy , which remains a promise yet not redeemed for millions of people in India.
Sharmila decided to do what she did in November 2000. On the 2nd of the month, military shot 10 (some accounts say 12) people dead at a bus stop in Malom, a suburb of Itanagar. Why this Malom `massacre' happened is still a mystery: the official version refers to a grenade attack. Most people, including Sharmila, laugh at this. The military shot dead many , young and old. At least 42 were thrashed. Sharmila asked, why . And did the classic act of civil disobedience, which has gone on for almost 16 years. In diminutive Desmond Coutinho, who wrote to her and sent stuff to read, she found love. Her new turn to take direct part in politics can only enrich Indian democracy .

Source: Economic Times, 28-07-2016

A P J Abdul Kalam's Only Regret

Srijan Pal Singh





In 2014, we visited Mumbai to attend the fiftieth anniversary celebrations of a local college. It was a modest celebration, and A P J Abdul Kalam was happy to see that the college was catering to students from low-income families, giving them quality education at affordable fees.Kalam was greeted with a lot of cheering when he entered the hall.Through his speech he addressed the concerns of the youth who had come from challenging economic conditions.He spoke about his own life, his failures and his successes. He spoke of the great Nobel Laureate Mario Capecchi, a victim of the Second World War, who had lost most of his family in the war.He had to spend his childhood in an orphanage. But despite his difficulties, he persevered and went on to ... become a renowned scientist. At the end of his speech, Kalam was given a standing ovation. This was followed by a question-and-answer session. He answered each question with his usual wit and grace.
Suddenly , a young student of about twenty stood up to ask a question: “Sir, you have had so many successes.I am sure you had some failures too. You always say that you have built your successes over the lessons learnt from failures. I want to know something. Is there something that you could not do, and still regret not doing it?“ A P J Abdul Kalam took his time to think through the answer and finally replied, “You know, back home, I have an elder brother who is ninety-eight years old now. He can walk slowly , but steadily, and completely on his own. He has a little problem with his vision and hence there is always a need to keep the house well lit, especially in the night.
“Now you see, in Rameswaram, there are power cuts sometimes. Thus it becomes difficult for him to move about freely. So, last year I got a rooftop solar panel installed at home, with a good battery . When the sun shines, the panel gives power, and in the night the battery takes over the power supply . Now there is plenty of power all the time.
My brother is happy .
“When I see him happy ,I also feel happy. But I am also reminded of my own parents.Both of them lived for almost a hundred years and towards their later years they had difficulty seeing things well. Three decades ago, the power cuts were more frequent. Back then I could do nothing for them. There was no solar power. The fact that I could not do any thing to remove their pain is my greatest regret, something which will remain with me forever.“
The answer touched a chord in the hearts of everyone in the audience.Here was a person, more than eighty years old, who had achieved so much in life, but still had the compassion and the humility to speak publicly about his greatest failure. He was still bothered about failing his parents. How many of us think of such things?
I couldn't help but wonder when I had last stopped to consider my parents' situation, when I had tried to do anything to ease their burden.
(Courtesy: Penguin Books, `What Can I Give?' ­ Life Lessons from My Teacher, A P J Abdul Kalam.)

Source: Times of India, 28-07-2016

Tireless fighter against scavenging

Avijit Ghosh

New Delhi:





Magsaysay Awards For Activist Bezwada Wilson, Carnatic Vocalist TM Krishna

Bezwada Wilson's earliest memory of manual scavenging is that of a young family member telling his uncle, “Why did you give me this job? You should have given me poison.“ “I was barely fours year old then and couldn't really understand why he was so upset.And why he kept smelling his hands all the time,“ recalls Wilson, the 50-year-old Dalit activist who has been selected for the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay award.Wilson was raised in Kar nataka's Kolar Gold Fields township. His parents and elder brother were manual scavengers. So was much of the neighbourhood. His early days in school were free of caste prejudice because everyone was from the same colony .
But as he shifted to Kuppam, a small town about 30km away , for higher studies, life became difficult and bewildering as a young Wilson tried to understand what made him different from fellow students.
One day his schoolmates asked him where he lived. He replied, the sweeper's colony .“Till then, they were all affectionate. From then on, they lost interest in me,“ he says.When he spoke about the incident to his parents, they just said, “It's everywhere and nothing new.“ He was eight then. In 1982, Wilson moved back to his home town and started teaching at night to fellow community members.
But within a few years, he realised that illiteracy wasn't the only problem among Dalits. Alcoholism, too, was another major issue. Working at an alcohol de-addiction camp, Wilson learnt a bitter truth.“Some people at the camp told me, you tell us not to drink.But if you see the way we work and where we work, you will understand why we drink,“ he says. His battle against manual scavenging had begun. From 1986-89, Wilson says, he wrote dozens of letters to authorities and the then prime minister and also published articles in newspapers highlighting the scourge.
Then came another turning point in his life. As part of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar's birth centenary celebrations, Wilson participated in a cycle rally from Andhra Pradesh to Karnataka lasting 50 days.The rallyists met hundreds of villagers on the way . It turned out to be a voyage of self-discovery .
“I realised there is a word for all the discrimination I had faced. It was called `untouchability`. And that it happens due to the caste system. And to come out of it, there was only the Ambedkar way ,“ says Wilson. He spent large parts of the journey reading, listening and talking about Ambedkar's ideology .
By 1992, he had come up with Safai Karmachari Andolan (SKA), a people's movement against the social evil. “I realised that the fight is not against the bucket and the broom. The battle was deeper with roots in the caste system,“ says Wilson, a political science graduate.
Manual scavenging was banned by an Act in 1993. In 2013, another Act with more bite was passed. But the practice continues, especially in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Jammu & Kashmir, Maharasthra and Tripura. As per 2011 socioeconomic caste census, 1.82 lakh households in rural areas reported themselves as manual scavengers. The 2011 House-listing and Housing Census found that there are about 26 lakh `insanitary' latrines in the country .
The Magsaysay citation details Wilson's work: filing PIL in Supreme Court on the issue, raising awareness, training local leaders and volunteers for the movement.“The SKA has liberated around 3,00,000 scavengers,“ it says. “The entire cleaning of sewage must be mechanised.No worker should stop into the drain. Stop killing us,“ says Wilson. The Magsaysay citation rightly says, “The board of trustees recognizes his (Wilson's) moral energy and prodigious skill in leading a grassroots movement to eradicate the degrading servitude of manual scavenging in India, reclaiming for the dalits the human dignity that is their natural birthright.“
None will disagree.

Source: Times of India, 28-07-2016

The crisis of Indian democracy

India has failed to nurture individual and collective capabilities. There has been far too little effort in public policy to create spaces where citizens interact freely and peacefully

While India’s economy has received periodic attention, mostly during critical moments defined by food shortages and foreign exchange outages, the workings of its democracy have received next to none. This reflects a complacency.

Interestingly, the neglect is evident in every angle from which the country has been approached, applying to observers located both within and without its society. Thus while the rulers of the western world berate India for its deviance from the apparently superior norms of a free-market architecture, India’s nationalist elite traces her pathologies to western hegemony. Both lose the narrative by refusing to see that its condition is related to the failings of its democracy, which in one dimension has remained more or less unchanged since 1947. This dimension is that the majority of the population has been left with weak capabilities.

Unfree after Independence

Capabilities are what enable individuals to pursue the lives that they value. This, Nobel laureate Amartya Sen has suggested, is true freedom and should therefore be the focus of all developmental effort. The idea is foundational in that it vaults over narrow economistic or political definitions of development. It is irrelevant to it whether we have more or less of the state or the market or whether we insert ‘socialist’ and ‘secular’ into the Constitution so long as large sections of our people are unfree in the sense that they cannot lead lives that they value. Jawaharlal Nehru, though perhaps elliptically, had expressed this in his famous speech on August 14, 1947.

He had seen Indian Independence as an opportunity to build a “prosperous, democratic and progressive nation and to create social, economic and political institutions which will ensure justice and fullness of life to every man and woman”. B.R. Ambedkar, with legal acumen and a practical bent of mind, had defined democracy as a means to bring about a significant change in the living conditions of the depressed without resorting to bloodshed. These ambitious programmes and the hard work they would have entailed fell by the wayside in the practices of India’s political class and in the discourse of its intellectuals.

Whatever may have been the vision of India’s founding fathers, Indian democracy has not lived up to their expectations. As a matter of fact, it has done far worse. In the past year it appears to have added heightened violence towards the marginalised to its sedentary character. The incident of four Dalit youth being beaten in full public view in Gujarat is only the most recent instance of this. Parliament reportedly heard accusations and defences the next day but it is not yet clear what impact it will have and how civil society will respond. India’s middle classes are quick to be hurt when news of Indians subjected to racial indignity in the West is beamed into our living rooms. No one could have missed the irony of Prime Minister Narendra Modi earlier this month travelling by train in South Africa where about a century ago M.K. Gandhi was thrown out of a first class carriage because of the colour of his skin.

The scenes from India come a full century later. And the Dalit youths had, going by public sources, only skinned a dead cow, a task to which Indian society historically confined them. By assaulting them for undertaking it, not only has their dignity been denied but their livelihood snatched away. In any civilised society the perpetrators of this crime would not just be grasped by the long arm of the law but publicly shamed.

Gujarat is of course only one of the sites of violence against Dalits. It is important to recognise that it has been widespread across northern India and not absent from the south either, with Tamil Nadu featuring prominently. It is also important to recognise that acts of violence against Dalits are not of recent origin. Their oppression is systemic and deeply rooted in India. Non-Congress parties with leadership drawn from the middle castes have long ruled Tamil Nadu, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, among India’s most populous States, all of which have witnessed violence against the Dalits for some time. When in power, middle caste-based parties have replaced their invective towards the top of the caste pyramid with suppression of those at its bottom.

The socialist chimera

So what can we do now? For those outside the corridors of power the task is to shape the discourse on Indian democracy. Its goal must now be redirected towards human development while ensuring the security of all vulnerable groups. This need not in any way conflict with growing a strong economy. In fact, a strong economy, including a vigorous market, is one element in furthering development as the expansion of freedoms. Opposition to the market, which has in certain contexts come equally from the Right and the Left in India, misses this point entirely. Restriction of private enterprise does nothing to empower the marginalised in a society. Their empowerment can come about only via direct public action to build their capabilities.

In fact, a genuine commitment to socialism should have helped here. Karl Marx had defended communism as the principle “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”. Instead, socialism as the official ideology of the Indian state for close to three decades got trapped into expanding a public sector producing goods regardless of outcome and independent of its consequences for the historically outcast. The state prided itself in being interventionist in the economy and laissez faire in the social sphere. The task, envisaged by Nehru, of creating the institutions necessary to support individual freedom, did not materialise. The historically outcast were left to fend for themselves, a stance morally equivalent to allowing the devil to take the hindmost.

Reorienting public policy

The chickens have finally come to home to roost. India today hosts the world’s largest number of the poorly educated and prone to poor health, a development disaster in spite of being the world’s third-largest economy in purchasing power terms. One need only occasionally travel third class on the Indian Railways in most parts of the country, which, recall, Gandhi did, to comprehend the scale of the deprivation and estimate how close public policy today comes to addressing it. As a quarter century has been spent focussing on India’s economic architecture in the name of ‘economic reforms’, it would be profitable to now devote the next decade to mounting an assault on human deprivation. The development of the capabilities of India’s women and Dalits, by virtue of their being the most deprived, would merit the first draft of attention and resources thus expended.

For a democracy to be complete, however, something more than just focus on the individual, however deserving they may be, is necessary as members of a democracy must engage with one another lest we remain equal but separated. Here public goods come into the reckoning. Public policy should engineer spaces where Indians meet on the basis of a participatory parity. Widespread public services from schools and hospitals to parks and crematoria are one way to bring individuals together as they struggle from birth to death in this country. Repeated interaction in public spaces would make us realise our common humanity and enable us to see any residual identity for what it really is.

There has been far too little effort in Indian public policy to create spaces where citizens may interact freely and peacefully. Many other countries have done so. For instance, the provision of public housing in ‘capitalist’ Singapore comes with the proviso that it should be shared between people of all ‘races’, namely Chinese, Indian and Malay.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has often spoken in global fora of the unacceptability of terrorism. He is right to do so. Now the incidents of assault on Dalits in Gujarat, rape of women across the country and intimidation of Muslims in Uttar Pradesh bring home to us the presence of terrorism among us. While some of this predates his arrival in Delhi, there is reason to believe that fascist forces have been encouraged to act with impunity since then.

In its inability to contain these forces, India’s democracy can be seen to be flailing. Bertrand Russell had remarked that we can never guarantee our own security if we cannot assure that of others. Tired of oppression the Dalits have finally risen in what was once the land of Gandhi. They at least have recognised our common humanity. They only dumped dead cattle at the collectorate. They did not poison the water supply.

Pulapre Balakrishnan teaches economics at Ashoka University, Sonipat, Haryana. The views expressed are personal.

Keywords: Indian democracy, human development, Una incident, atrocity against Dalits

Source: The Hindu, 27-07-2016

PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION CONFERENCE, 2017: CALL FOR PAPERS

Azim Premji University, Bangalore
January 9 – 11, 2017

Important Dates:* Deadline for submissions: October 31, 2016.
* Communications on acceptance of submissions: November 15, 2016
* Conference dates: January 9-11, 2017.

Travel and Accommodation:Authors are advised to first explore funding possibilities at their home institutions or other institutions and then contact us for travel funding. Azim Premji University will be supporting partial or full cost of travel for a limited number of authors based on individual merit and need. Lodging and boarding for the period of the Conference will be provided by Azim Premji University, Bangalore.

Manipur’s ‘Iron Lady’ Irom Sharmila to end 16-year fast, fight elections, marry

Irom Sharmila, whose 16-year hunger strike thrust rights abuses by Indian armed forces into public imagination, is set to end her fast, contest elections and, if everything goes to plan, also marry her Goan-British boyfriend.

The 43-year-old has been campaigning to scrap a law that shields troops from prosecution, but on Tuesday she said her struggle had been lonely and unfruitful. This left her with little choice but to “change my approach as I want to see success”.

“In my 16 year of journey, I see no visible change except the routine detention,” said Sharmila, speaking with her nose tube on that the authorities have used for years to force-feed her a sludgy mix of nutrients.

She told reporters that she would eat again on August 9 -- ending probably what is the world’s longest hunger strike -- and contest assembly polls due next year as an independent candidate.

Sharmila stopped eating and drinking in 2000 after allegedly witnessing the army kill 10 people at a bus stop near her home in Manipur, which is subject to the controversial law that gives Indian forces sweeping powers to search, enter property and shoot on sight.

“My fight so far has been all alone and so I have decided to wage a war against the Act democratically by becoming a lawmaker instead of continuing with my fast,” she told reporters, referring to the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA).

From the days of Mahatma Gandhi to the more recent anti-corruption protests of Anna Hazare, India has a long history of activists using hunger strikes as a tool of protest. But Sharmila’s fast caught global attention for its sheer duration.

Almost immediately after she began her fast she was arrested under a law that makes attempting suicide a crime, leading Amnesty International to call her a “prisoner of conscience”.

She has been confined to a hospital ward in Manipur’s capital, Imphal, and is force-fed via a plastic nasal drip several times a day.

The controversial law, which traces its origins to a British-era ordinance used to suppress the Quit India Movement of 1942, is blamed by human rights groups for illegal killings and arbitrary detentions by security forces. The military denies misusing the law.

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court dealt a blow to the army’s immunity under a the law, saying it can’t use “excessive or retaliatory force” even in troubled places, and agreed to an investigation into hundreds of alleged illegal killings by security forces in Manipur.

Some of Sharmila’s aides said her decision to call off her fast might have been influenced by her boyfriend, who is also an activist. She told a court, where she appeared on Tuesday in connection with her attempted suicide case, that she would like to marry.

Sharmila’s brother, Singhajit, said her family backed her new fight.

“Whatever she does we will support her as a family. Even our mother is hoping for the day when the act is abolished and Sharmila wins the cause she has been fighting for,” Singhajit, who uses one name, said.

Source: Hindustan Times, 27-07-2016