Skip to main content

Cover Story

Women, Unemployed, Rural Poor Lagging due to Digital Divide

Photo: pexels

Only 3 percent of rural residents are computer owners

By IANSlife

December 5, 2022 (IANSlife) According to Oxfam India's most recent "India Inequality Report 2022: Digital Divide," India's worryingly expanding inequalities based on caste, religion, gender, class, and location are being duplicated in the digital sphere. According to the survey, in 2021, 61 percent of men owned phones, compared to only 31 percent of women. 

According to the survey, the usage of digital technologies is still mostly restricted to urban, male, upper-caste, and upper-class homes and people. Less than 1 percent of the Scheduled Tribes (ST) and 2% of the Scheduled Castes (SC) own a computer or laptop, compared to 8 percent of the General caste. According to the GSMA's Mobile Gender Gap research, women will be 33 percent less likely than males to use mobile internet in 2021.

“The Digital technologies were supposed to make public services and schemes more accessible. But the ‘India Inequality Report 2022: Digital Divide’ shows this isn’t happening. The report highlights how digital technologies are accessible to the rich and privileged. The report shows that a person with a post-graduate or a Ph.D. is 60 percent more likely to have a phone than a person with no education. This is worrying because this digital divide can further deepen the existing socio-economic inequalities in the country. We urge the state and Union governments to immediately take necessary steps to universalise internet connectivity and treat digital technologies as a public utility, not a privilege”, said Amitabh Behar, CEO of Oxfam India.

The research examines primary data from the household survey conducted by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) between January 2018 and December 2021. In order to evaluate the inclusiveness of digital initiatives to deliver public services and entitlements, the research looks at CMIE statistics on internet access, mobile ownership, computer and broadband availability. The National Sample Survey's secondary analysis is also utilised in this study (NSS).

According to the analysis, there would be a digital divide depending on employment status in 2021, with 95 percent of salaried permanent workers having phones compared to 50 percent of unemployed people who are eager and looking for work. The research also emphasises that, contrary to common belief, fewer people were using computers in rural areas. Prior to the pandemic, only 3 percent of rural residents were computer owners. Since the epidemic, this has decreased to just 1 percent . In contrast, only 8 percent of residents in metropolitan regions own computers.

The country's digital divide and its effects are also reflected in the usage of digital technologies to supply important services like education and healthcare. Signal and internet speed were the major problems in private schools, according to Oxfam India's five states fast assessment study conducted during the shutdown in September 2020, which revealed 82 percent of parents had difficulties assisting their children in accessing digital education. 80% of parents in government schools said that no instruction took place during the lockout. Due to a shortage of equipment and access to the internet, 84 percent of instructors in public schools reported having difficulty delivering lessons using digital tools.

Amitabh Behar, CEO of Oxfam India said, “India's growing inequality is accentuated due to the digital divide. The growing inequality based on caste, religion, gender, class, and geographic location also gets replicated in the digital space. People without devices and the internet get further marginalised due to difficulties in accessing education, health, and public services. This vicious cycle of inequality needs to stop.”

The report welcomes several initiatives by state and union governments in India to promote digital literacy, availability, accessibility, and affordability of the digital technologies. Following are some recommendations provided by the authors to bridge digital divide in India:

  • The report highlights economic inequality as a key driver of the digital divide. To this end, the government’s efforts to bridge India’s current income inequality by improving the income of the poor becomes pertinent and can go a long way. This can be done by setting a decent minimum living wage, easing the indirect tax burden on citizens and provision of universal health and education services.
  • The most basic step toward bridging the digital divide is availability. In rural and hard-to-reach areas, internet availability is either intermittent, poor or non-existent. Service providers need to ensure its availability through community networks and public WiFi/ internet access points. Community networks are a subset of crowdsourced networks, designed to be open, free, and neutral, and often reliant on shared infrastructure as a common resource. They are usually built, used, and managed with a bottom-up approach by communities. Such networks should also have good-quality upload and download speeds, sufficient for the local needs of internet users.
  1. To ensure universal access to internet connectivity, it has to be affordable for the masses.
  2. To drive down prices, the government can invest in digital infrastructure to not only make the internet affordable, but also push for greater accessibility to smartphones.  
  3. The government has to be a strong regulatory figure in this regard, ensuring that data and broadband services are not monopolized by private players.
  4. Additionally, the government can lower taxes on computers and phones that are often prohibitively high
  • Conduct digital literacy camps, especially in rural India, to teach the use of technology in schools, and digitize panchayats and schools.
  • Establish a responsive and accountable grievance redressal mechanism to handle EdTech and Healthtech-related complaints by parents, children, and other consumers.
  • Acknowledge that tech-based solutions are not always the right answers. Even in times of crises like pandemics, governments also need to consider low- or no-tech solutions.

 

 

(This article is website exclusive and cannot be reproduced without the permission of IANSlife)

IANSlife can be contacted at ianslife@ians.in

IANS Life