i4donline: May - June 2003 issue: IT For The Common Man: Lessons from India

The basic question

I am tempted to begin with apologies.I am not Indian, I am no expert on compu- ter science and technology,I speak no In- dian languages,I rely entirely on the generosity of Indian colleagues,friends, and workers in the field.I am neither an orientalist nor an unqualified admirer of all that is Indian: I have spent too much time in hungry villages not to recognize the problems as well as the potentials of this,the largest and most diverse of all democracies.That said, I will proceed to the topic.

In brief,and put oversimply, I want to argue that India does -or could -lead the world in creating both the technol- ogies for reaching ordinary people and the grass-roots social experiments that could teach both India and other nations how to use those technologies for the common good.

Any discussion of what a recent Gov- ernment of India report called "IT for the Masses", however, must begin with the most fundamental question of all. It is well stated by Subhash Bhatnagar of IIM- Ahmedabad, in his introduction to a re- cent book on rural IT in India. How can we justify the expense of IT in a rural In- dia where so many basic needs are unmet and so many basic rights are violated? Bhatnagar's question is profound. To visit a village where 70 per cent of all men, women and children are below the pover- ty line, where children’s hair is gray and red from malnutrition, where there is no work, no school, no medical care, to say nothing of no infrastructure needed for modern IT, is necessarily to wonder wheth- er, when, and how information technolo- gy can help. Surely other priorities:food, education, medical care, basic rights, so- cial justice, freedom from corruption and meeting these priorities must be the core criteria for any use of modern informa- tion technologies.

That said,the question is not how to use information technologies,or even whether to use them,but under which cir- cumstances,if any,information technolo- gies can be a means -the most cost-effective means -of helping ordinary Indians,espe- cially those in the weaker sectors of the so- ciety,meet their fundamental needs and achieve their basic rights.Put this way,the question is not only a philosophical but an empirical one:it requires examining on- going efforts in India to achieve just those purposes,to see if and how they work.