DIGITAL DIVIDE Presented

By R.Gayatri(MBF)AU

What is Digital Divide ?The “digital divide” is defined as the gap between different

individuals, households, businesses and geographical areas at different social-economic levels as regards their opportunities to access IT and their use of the Internet.

The term digital divide is used to describe situations in which there is a market gap in access to the use of new information communication devices.

Digital divide exists in variety of other levels; sector, community, and individual level with regard to use access of new information communication technologies.

The concept of a digital divide between technological „haves and have not‟s has been a useful tool in efforts to bring greater, more equal access to powerful new information and communication technologies like the Internet.

Dimensions of Digital DivideThe word “divide” suggests a significant barrier, one on a massive scale and hard to shift as in “continental divide” or “great divide”. Digital divide is emphasized much on –

ConnectivityCapacityContentCommunityFinancePolicy Framework

Connectivity :It modifies not only the telecommunications

infrastructure but also availability of state of the art , work state peripheral equipment and software. Access to all these by the general population, not merely technology for rural and disadvantaged communities.

Capacity :Sufficient trained IT professionals to install and

maintain h/w, s/w and networks. Professional information workers those who are belongs to education and professional associations of IT and library information professionals.

Content :Content not only means from the developed but

also from the country it and communities in vernacular language relevant to national and local issue are as far as concerned.

Community :Client base depends on literacy rate and level

or groups, including rural communities ,women ,children and elderly persons with disabilities.

Finance :Capital for investment in infrastructure and

implementation ongoing revenue for sustainability of systems. Legislation and regularly bodies impacting on telecommunications, the flow of content, e-commerce, availability of foreign currency, funds between levels of govt. budgetary constraints, producers, competitions, non-govt. organization etc.

Policy Framework :National information policies, IT, knowledge

society, e-govt., technology transfer, rural transfer, etc. Moral and ethical framework, issues of information sovereignty versus information media and cultural hegemony of the powerful western industrialized nations.

INITIATIVES OF BRIDGING THE DIGITAL DIVIDE IN INDIA

There are some initiatives are taking place for diffusion of information technologies from different stakeholders but comparing the vastness of the economy; these are isolated cases and mostly concentrated in urban areas and organized sectors only.

• Kissan Call Center• Life line India• Bhoomi Project• Gyanadoot Project• TDIL Project• Friends’ Project

Kissan call centre :The dept. of Agriculture and co-operation

(DAC) ministry of agriculture govt of India launched Kisan call centres of Jan 21,2004, , across the country to deliver extension services. All the queries related to agriculture and allied sectors are being addressed through these call centres .

Life Line India :It is a charitable organization working to

promote human rights and sustainable development across the globe to explore ideas for a telephone based information service to enable farmers to record a question and after retrieve a recorded reply. By engaged with cisco to co-sponsor the initiative. Life lines India launched in nov.2006.

Bhoomi Project :It is created in Karnataka states covers 66.6 millions of records of land ownership. This project has earned the good will of many people and also international funding agencies. The project has own 2002 common wealth association of public administration and management award for creating self content governance and opening up new fofronties .

Gyandoot Project :Gyandoot is an internet in Dhar district connecting rural cyber cafes catering to the everyday needs of the masses. This web site of Gyandoot is extension of Gyandoot internet, for giving global access. Gyndoot is the 1st project in India for a rural information network in the Dhar district of Madhya Pradesh which has the highest percentage of tribes. These kind of projects demonstrate that rural consumers can and will benefit from connectivity.

TDIL Project :The depth of information technology initiate the TDIL(Technology Development for Indian Languages) with the aim of developing information processing tools and techniques to facilitate human machine interaction without resources and integrating them to develop modern user products and services.

Friends’ Project :The fast, reliable instant efficient network for disbursement of services (FRIENDS) project has been launched by the state of Kerala in the southern part of the country with a view to-wards mitigating the hardship of citizens, playing taxes by eliminating middle man, delays and long queues. This project has expanded to serve 13 million people in 12 districts of Kerala. The philosophy of FRIENDS is to treat citizens as valued customers.

ICTs & EncapsulationWhat is ICTs??

• In the last decades, the world has begun to undergo a new technologically-driven revolution, allegedly leading toward what is commonly called “the Information, closely linked to an explosion of processing and access speeds, ever-lowering costs of Age.”

• The last two decades have seen an explosive and unprecedented growth in these commonly called ‘information and communication technologies (ICTs).’

• Discrepancies in ICT access between the so-called “North” (industrialized and wealthy nations like the U.S., West Europe, and Japan) and the “South” (virtually all developing nations) are massive, overwhelming and apparently increasing.

• The current ‘information technology’ revolution is the extraordinary rapidity of change.

• It took at least a century before the printing press touched 50 million individuals.

• It took 38 years for radio to reach the same number, and thirteen years for television.

• But the World Wide Web, in only four years, exceeded the 50,000,000 mark. Never before has a communications revolution spread so rapidly.

• The Indian Union Budget is being declared on 28th February 2015. As per statistics of Information and Communications Technology Development Index ﴾IDI﴿, India stands 129th rank among 166 countries worldwide which is a low rank.

ICT development ranking of select countriesCountry ICT

development ranking

ICT development index

Access sub-index ranking

Use sub-index ranking

Skills sub-index ranking

India 129 2.21 122 121 117China 78 4.18 80 66 93Pakistan 132 1.83 119 132 143Bangladesh

135 1.73 133 139 127

Sri Lanka 107 3.06 104 115 90US 117 7.53 29 14 3Brazil 62 5 67 57 72Korea 1 8.57 11 2 1Sweden 2 8.45 7 1 15Iceland 3 8.36 3 7 10Niger 166 0.99 148 152 157

The Four Digital Divides

The “digital divide” is widely regarded as a unitary phenomenon, it is useful to distinguish, in a general way, between the rich and powerful who are part of the Information Age and the poor and powerless who are not. But viewed analytically, there is not one, there are three digital divides -- and emerging in many nations a fourth.

The point is that “the digital divide” is really at least four divides, all closely related. The first is internal, between the digitally empowered rich and the poor. This gap exists all over India, although the baselines differ.

The second linguistic-cultural gap is largely between English and other languages, or more generally, between “Anglo-Saxon culture” and other world cultures.

The third is the gap exacerbated by disparities in access to information technology between rich and poor nations.

Finally, there is the emergent intra-national phenomenon of the “digerati”, an affluent elite characterized by skills appropriate to information-based industries and technologies, by growing affluence and influence unrelated to the traditional sources of elite status.

The Technology Gap between the Rich and PoorAccording to the 2012 Pew Report “Digital Differences,”

only 62% of people in households making less than $30,000 a year used the internet, while in those making $50,000-74,999 that percentage jumped to 90.

Smart phones have helped bridge the divide, as they provide internet access to populations previously at a digital disadvantage.

Fifty-six percent of teachers in low income schools say that their students’ inadequate access to technology is a “major challenge” for using technology as a teaching aid.

Interestingly, urban teachers are more likely to say students have poor access to internet at school, while rural teachers are more likely to report that students have poor access at home.

The digital divide is not a problem for developing countries, but also for developed countries.

Barrier of Digital Divide in Indian Scenario• Low Literacy Rate:

As per 2011 population census of India the literacy rate of India has shown as improvement at 74%. It shows male literacy rate 82.14%and female literacy is 65.46 % Kerala with 93.91% is the top literacy rate in India.

• Education System :One of the biggest challenges which face Indian education is the number of dropouts at the undergraduate level. To overcame the digital divide, the govt. has introduced the IT in the syllabus right from 1st standards so that the students will come to know various strategies of searching the Internet.

• Language :For Indians who speak no English the barriers to the information age are inseparable.

Problems of Digital Divide The digital divide concerns much more information to

increase the spectrum of skills we address, from an information retrieval skills, knowledge of seeking behavior and teaching on one hand.

An ICT environment out cries for information skills concerns for description of the digital divide concerns the difference between those who have access to information (the have’s) and those who do not have access to information.

At university level it has been found that even if students are offered access to ICT and the opportunity to build computer and information literacy skills, that stills seems to be a divide when putting these skills to use.

Obstacles to overcoming the global digital divide

Physical Access :Involves, “the distribution of ICT device per

capita..and lines per thousand”. Individuals need to obtain access to computers, landlines, and networks in order to access the Internet. This access barrier is also addressed in Article 21 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities by the United Nations.

• Financial Access :The cost of ICT devices, traffic, applications,

technician and educator training, software, maintenance and infrastructures require ongoing financial means.

• Socio-demographic Access :Empirical tests have identified that several

socio-demographic characteristics foster or limit ICT access and usage. Among different countries, educational levels and income are the most powerful explanatory variables, with age being a third one. Others, like gender, don't seem to have much of an independent effect.

• Institutional Access :In illustrating institutional access, Wilson

states "the numbers of users are greatly affected by whether access is offered only through individual homes or whether it is offered through schools, community centers, religious institutions, cybercafés, or post offices, especially in poor countries where computer access at work or home is highly limited".

Societal implications of digital divide

• Computer literacy: Those who can operate computers stand a

better chance than those who cannot, though literate and otherwise competent, to get even a secretarial job let alone an administrative one.

• Use of electronic data interchange (EDI): An export company from a country that

cannot use e-commerce over the Internet, may lose a large export order to another company from a different country that has collected more information through the Internet and submitted quotations through EDI.

• Tech savvy operations :Those who know how to operate

automated teller machine can draw money faster and those who cannot operate need to spend more time at manual counters.

• Working knowledge of English :Internet hosts more than 80% of the

Web pages in English though only 54% of the Internet users are amongst English-speaking people. In India and other developing countries, the disparity is much wider, resulting in a language divide.

Challenges of Digital Divide• Increasing the effectiveness of rural development programs

is a complex task.

• The administration has to be energized to face up to the challenge.

• The rural poor need to be educated and organized. In all these areas, information and communication technology can play a supportive role. Clearly improved literacy can have a lasting impact on rural poverty.

• A major stumbling block is the poor quality of governance and lack of participation by the poor in governance.

Conclusion The digital divide can never be contained in isolation but the effort

has to be multi-dimensional and multi-pronged.

Creation of ICT infrastructure and content are core methodologies and a thrust to technology growth in a planned manner will certainly lessen the gap.

There are two approaches to enable a wider population to benefit from technology and information revolutions; one is to enhance level of literacy (basic, functional technology and computer education amongst masses) and another is to design appropriate IT tools around the capabilities of users.

“It is dangerously destabilizing to have half the world on the cutting edge of technology while the other half struggles on the bare edge of survival”.