Digital Divide in India: Need for Correcting Urban Bias. (Communications)
N. Parvathamma · Information Technology and Libraries · 2003
A digital library is a capital- and technology-intensive project. It is a great challenge to develop digital in countries like India in light of the problems of shrinking budget; high initial and recurring expenditure; and social and economic problems of illiteracy, population growth, poor health conditions, inadequacy of resources for development programs, and weak infrastructure. While access to digital information is possible in more than two hundred cities in India, voice telephony is still a major medium of information transfer in villages. This paper discusses the social and economic issues that need to be considered to bridge this digital divide between rural and urban populations in order to ensure sustainable development of the country. ********** The digital revolution has altered the way society functions at global, local, and personal levels. It has led to changes in the collection, storage, processing, and transmission of information, changes that have resulted in the evolution of into digital libraries. Many definitions of digital have been put forth, and terms such as digital libraries, electronic libraries, and virtual are being widely used. While digital and electronic contain digitized information along with print-based publications, and may not necessarily be networked, virtual are often defined as libraries without walls, spread across the globe through communication networks. India has a population of 1.02 billion (as of March 2001), with an average literacy rate of 65.38 percent. However, the literacy rate varies from 47.53 percent in Bihar State to 96.92 percent in Kerala State. (1) On average, at present, 18.2 percent of rural and 36.9 percent of urban populations have completed at least ten years of schooling, are able to read and write English, and hence, are capable of using information and communication technologies, including digital libraries. (2) While 36 percent of the world population has access to the Internet, 2.3 million Indian users, or a mere 0.37 percent of Internet users, accessed the Internet in 2000. (3) The majority of these users were professionals from the corporate segment (43 percent) and students (38 percent). (4) The National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) estimates that Internet users in India would increase to 23 million by 2003. This, of course, is provided the projections are transformed into reality by extending Internet coverage from its almost urban, English-centric setting to rural and Indian-language-speaking populations; improvement in bandwidth; and penetration of the Internet through the use of personal computers and cable television. (5) Most villagers still depend upon personal interaction to share information within their community. (6) This disparity in the use of digital information can be bridged to ensure sustainable development of India by addressing the social and economic issues discussed in this paper If these inequalities are not dealt with at their roots, then technological access and use will be limited to urban areas and the computer literates, further marginalizing the rural population. This digital divide can be narrowed through digital literacy and training, content development in local languages, development of multimedia products that even those who are illiterate can understand, and utilization of digital technology at the community level. Hence, the objectives of a digital library in the Indian context should be: * bringing the benefits of IT-based services to people; * making available the latest information communication technologies (ICTs) to both the business and non-business populations; * creating awareness in the underserved populations about their basic value; * offering services which are beneficial to them; and * making these services and facilities self-sustaining in the long run. …