Roop, excellent post that sums up the social value proposition and a couple of points are easy to miss - a) that rapid technology growth spurts historically have widened the have/have-not divide and b) areas of high poverty/low education usually demand the highest tech ICT4D solutions to be effective precisely because of the lack of capacity to repurpose these tools. Dial-up access and Windows 98 may be less likely to succeed than broadband and Windows XP because the latter is "plug n play." No techies to futz with batch files and modem settings. ICT service cost models in this domain tend not to account for this.
ICT services integrated into traditional delivery has been a reliable indicator of favorable outcome in ICT4D projects in W.Africa and central America. Thanks for a great post. -SG -----Original Message----- From: roop dave [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, February 13, 2006 10:20 AM To: The Digital Divide Network discussion group Subject: Re: [DDN] [Multilingualism in Cyberspace] Perhaps more complex thanthat Hi every one ... In my view "Language" and "Digital Divde" are two separate things. Follwoing are my observations in thie regard Needless to say that ICTs in the developing countries have contributed in increasing divide or gap between rural and urban. Increased tele density in Indian urban area from that of about 5 % before year 2000 to that of 18-23 in the year 2005, with rural tele density still hovering about 1 % proves that - disadvantaged rural population got further ignored in the current ICT enabling process. Every one knows that hundreds of call centers are catering to majority of developed countries helping their air transportation, banking, IT industries, health sectors - 24/7! But none of the call center is either doing or is capable of helping next-door neighbors in rural areas in the same country! Reasons are many and the debate can be endless -but in my view - Characteristically -All innovations and new (technology) inceptions reaches to limited segments - offering advantages to certain groups and disadvantages to others, specifically in the first or initial phase; Poor tele com infrastructures in rural area are the biggest hindrance in percolation of ICT enabled services there; Internet would, perhaps, will be used as an access mechanism, initially, to access specific websites designed and populated for delivering custom design services by the local government for rural and urban citizens. All these applications will be in vernacular language (many of them are available today also). India Rural citizens have a very low propensity to consume and their requirements are very limited and restricted due to various reasons (education, poverty, castes etc..). Health, education and revenue matters (land transfer etc ) are few of critical service demands in Indian rural areas and non-other then local governments can satisfy these. Plethora of information on internet has no meaning for these rural people. Rural area needs services in their own language and good ICT infrastructures along with local governments commitment for delivering services in electronic form are two critical issues. People do not know reading and writing and depends on village teacher or volunteer for these activities. Modern ICTs channels would require to be integrated with the traditional last mile channel of communication (teacher or village volunteers) for deriving early results. It will takes decades before we will see elevation in poverty and education level of rural masses, and it will be injustice if we do not design a way to integrate modern ICT enabled services into their day-to-day life. Language should not e barrier in bridging digital-divide. Dave R K --- _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
