SOUTH ASIA: Digital Divide Sharpens Rich-Poor Gap - Jul 21st, 2010

NEW DELHI -- South Asia has emerged as the most promising region for sourcing information technology (IT) expertise, but this is an achievement that is of use only to the rich nations, say critics.


The so-called digital divide between industrialised and developing nations is being replicated within the region, widening the already big gulf between the majority poor and an English language-speaking, Internet-savvy elite, they point out.

On average, less than one out of every 10 of the 1.3 billion people in the subcontinent have access to computers and only a small fraction of these use the Internet.

The region's emerging prominence as an IT 'superpower', best seen in the case of India, is said to be accentuating the sharp contrast between an educated white-collar 'elite' and the rest.

Increasingly, the new sub-continental Internet-using elite identifies less with their digitally-deprived compatriots than with what Kenneth Keniston, expert on South Asian software at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), calls the global 'digirati.'

In the past half century, South Asian nations have done little to raise living standards of the majority poor who are a world apart from a microscopic, English language-speaking elite that is close to the centres of political and economic decision making.
The big Indian names in the global IT industry such as Sabeer Bhatia, creator of Hotmail and Azim Premji, rated by Forbes magazine among the world's five richest people, belong to this class.
Says New Delhi-based education expert, Kirti Jayaraman: ''The Internet is very much a big-city phenomenon and confined to the elite classes who may as well be living on a different planet with access to the Internet from their homes, offices and schools.''
According to Jayaraman, the digital divide can be seen quite clearly in schools in India's big cities. Here, the children of rich and middle class families go to English language-medium schools stacked with computers linked to the Internet.
On the other hand, the urban poor send their children to government schools that instruct in the vernacular language and lack tables, chairs and even roofs.

The situation is worse in India's vast rural hinterland. Barely 25 km from New Delhi is India's most populous state Uttar Pradesh which according to U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) estimates will take all of this century to make all its 170 million people literate......view more