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Literacy, Information, and Governance in the Digital Era: An Indian Scenario
Intl. Inform. & Libr. Rev. (2002), 34, 255^270 doi:10.1006/iilr.2002.0203 Available online at http://www.idealibrary.com on
Literacy, Information, and Governance in the Digital Era: An Indian Scenario* P. R. GOSWAMIw
A B ST R AC T This paper presents an overview of the use of digital information in India for the purposes of poverty alleviation, the marketing of farm produce in rural areas, responsive governance, and provision of access to o⁄cial records and information. The paper also seeks to identify better ways of using information and communication technology for Indian national development. r 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.
I N T RODUC T ION Recent advances in digital information and communication technology (ICT) makes possible the development and dissemination of information through various forms and means of media on a local, national, and international level. ICT has produced marvels like the Internet, the World Wide Web, interactive multimedia, CD-ROMs, on-line digital libraries, etc. As a result, individuals now feel that they are members of an open information system not ¢xed by the locality or the institution.1 The information society is the parlance of today’s world. It is not just a product of or equivalent to ICT; rather, it is the product of an interplay of social and technological dynamics (Rosell, p. 29),2 which include: (a) Rapid progress in information processing and telecommunications, and the growing link between the two. *Paper submitted to ASIST Special Interest Group of International Information Issues. (International Paper Contest, 2001). w Librarian, Faculty of Management Studies, University of Delhi, Delhi 110007, India. Tel.: +91766-7264, +91-576-4889. E-mail: [email protected], [email protected] 1 Katsirikou, A. & Sefertzi, E. (2000) Innovation in everyday life of libraries. Technovation 20, 705. 2 Rosell, S.A. (1997) Governing in an information society. Technological Forecasting and Social Change 54(1), 29^30.
1057^2317/02/$ - see front matter r 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.
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(b) The emergence of more informed and educated groups which can assert a role in governance. (c) The provision for better access to information and development in mass media through ICT. (d) A higher degree of specialization in knowledge-based economies. These key characteristics of an information society are manifest in developed countries of the West. However, new innovations in ICT also offer opportunities to developing countries. India now has better ways to use the nation’s knowledge base. Digitization allows for integration of graphics, texts, video, and sound; it also provides information services in di¡erent forms. Moreover, the liberalization of the communications sector facilitates the use of ICT for the real-time exchange of information. The aim of this paper is to present an ambivalent view of the use of ICT in India for the purpose of the success of the market economy, good governance, social justice, and development. Some of these ideals are somewhat analogous to the notions of transparency and accountability in administration as well as provision of access to information. The paper also discusses the role of literacy and information in poverty alleviation programmes. I N DI A : A P ROF IL E India is one of the oldest civilizations in the world with a rich cultural heritage and a number of distinctive regions. It covers an area of 32,87,263 km2 with a population of more than 1 billion. India, a union of 28 States and seven centrally administered Union Territories, is a democratic republic with a parliamentary system of government. During the 55 years of its independence, the country has made progress in development. Agricultural production has increased many times over, and India is now ranked in 10th place behind the industrialized countries of the world. (India, p. 1).3 In general, people from the developed world view India as a densely populated country with problems like poverty, malnutrition, and unemployment. It has a vast pool of human resources. A recent monograph released by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as an analysis of India’s macro-economic policies and ¢scal health observes: India is a land of contrast. More than one billion people live in a vast territory among architectural and sculptural wonders that give vivid testimony to its 3 India, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Research, Reference and Training Division (2001) India, 2001: a reference annual. New Delhi: Publication Division.
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powerful and age old customs. Yet, there is also a very modern face of India which is responding to the growing forces of globalisation and where IT has found a fertile environment (Collen, p. 1).4
From this report’s perspective, modern India is a country with a liberalized economy. The reforms undertaken so far have promoted economic growth. As regards the IT sector, India has done reasonably well in software development. According to the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM), the software export statistics for 2000^2001 are expected to be worth $6.2 billion, an increase of over 55% over the $4 billion achieved in the previous year. In the year 2000, 185 of Fortune 500 companies outsourced their software requirements to Indian companies. India has been focusing more on IT services rather than products.5 I N F OR M AT ION A N D P OV E RT Y A L L EV I AT ION The World Development Report (2000^2001) contains a statement by the President of the World Bank who observes that poverty can be reduced by spreading technology and information to needy populations worldwide. It is important to bridge the gap between the digital divide as well as knowledge divide. The report also narrates the story of a woman who bene¢ted by information obtained through cellular phone technology: I always sell eggs to middlemen. In the past, whatever prices they o¡ered, I accepted because I had no idea about going prices of the eggsy last week, the middleman came and desired to pay me 12 takka per hali (four units)y keeping him waiting, I rushed to check the price through the village phone. The price was 14 takka per hali of eggs in nearby markets. I came back and refused to sell to him at the lower pricesy After a brief haggling, we agreed to buy and sell at 13 takka per hali. Halima Khatuun, a poor illiterate woman in Bangladesh (World Bank, p 73).6
Such instances of poor people reaping bene¢ts from ICT is not uncommon on the Indian subcontinent. However, poverty and illiteracy are two major problems throughout India’s countryside. According to 4 Collen, T., Raynold, P. & Towe, E. (Eds) (2001) India at the cross roads: sustaining growth and reducing poverty. Washington, DC: International Monetary Fund. 5 Mehta, D. (2001) Hardsell software: take the down out of slowdown. Times of India April 10, p. 12. 6 World Bank (2001) World development report 2000: Attacking poverty. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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the Census of India, 2001 ¢gures, the literacy rate in India is now 65 per cent. It is also estimated that 27 per cent of India’s population live below the poverty line. Most of the poor and illiterate are agricultural labourers or small artisans, and economists have said that programmes to assure a modicum of economic security for the poor and to guarantee equality of opportunity for all have faltered in recent years (Arrow, p. 1).7 Of late, NGOs and local bodies of certain states in India are exploring the ways and means by which ICT can be utilized for the purpose of ameliorating the conditions of the poor. Research results have shown that literacy is a determining factor in the economic status of a household. The distribution of literacy across households does matter, due to the external e¡ects of literacy. One can draw the conclusion that an illiterate person’s ability to transform various kinds of informational inputs into ‘functioning’ is tied to the literacy status of the household.8 There are examples of informational inputs, which are meant for disadvantaged groups. They include: (a) Government circulars/noti¢cations intimating social assistance to physically handicapped widows and others. (b) Lea£ets released by NGOs advising rural people of their speci¢c rights to information. (c) Public health o⁄ce bulletins on the advantages of oral rehydration. In order to provide the correct information to the right person at a convenient place and time, a number of projects have been started by NGOs in rural India. One of the objectives of these projects is to enhance the information literacy of the poor. To be information literate, a person must be able to recognize what information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use e¡ectively the needed information.9 In Rajasthan State, Neyla, a village had the privilege of having an Information Kiosk Rajnidhi on 23 March 2000 when US President Bill Clinton visited the village to observe the functioning of a Gram Panchayat (i.e. village assembly). Rajnidhi is a project geared to use ICT, especially the Internet, to replace the traditional form of governance with a more open and responsive service delivery system. 7
Arrow, K. et al. (2000) Meritocracy and economic inequality. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Basu, K., Foster, J.E. & Subramanian, S. (2000) Isolated and proximate illiteracy and why these concepts matter in measuring literacy and designing education programme. Economic and Political Weekly 35(2), 35^36. 9 American Library Association (1999) Final report of the Presidential Committee on Information Literacy. Chicago: American Library Association. 8
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Rajnidhi information kiosks, when made functional all over a federal state, would provide citizens with access to information on health, family planning, immunization schedules for children, employment, transportation, distance education, agriculture, water and electricity connections, birth and death registration, approved housing societies, and rates of land and building taxes. In order to involve citizens in democratic processes, Rajnidhi also provides opportunities to participate in state policy making. Through a user-friendly interface, citizens can communicate their suggestions and complaints to the Chief Minister and senior o⁄cials. Another prominent example of information facilitation is the Gyandoot programme, a community-owned, self-sustainable, low-cost rural Intranet model in Madhya Pradesh state. The project has attracted worldwide attention. In this project, computers in 31 village centres have been wired through an Intranet network. These information kiosks are called Soochanalayas. They provide user-charge-based service to rural people on wide ranging topics such as (a) agriculture produce auction centre rates, (b) copies of land records, (c) on-line registration of applications, (d) on-line public grievance ¢ling, (e) rural e-mail, (f) village auction sites, (g) on-line matrimonial sites, (h) information regarding government programmes, (i) career counselling services, (j) expert programmes (questions can be asked by villagers about the latest techniques, new technologies, etc. regarding agriculture, animal husbandry, health, and legal opinions), (k) On-line application formats required by the local administration. At present, there are 31 Soochanalayas; the ¢rst 20 were started by a village committee and community; the remaining 11 were started by private entrepreneurs. The local administration decided to expand the project when village youths started new centres as private enterprises. The Gyandoot Samiti, a registered society to support the project has developed software in Hindi (India’s national language) for Intranet and various other services.10 In addition to these, NGOs like M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) have shown that their knowledge centres in villages have resulted in higher demand from the poor for access to 10
Vittal, N. (2001) Innovative e-governance. The Economic Times February 10.
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government-sponsored programmes. MSSRF is training the ¢shermen in coastal areas to use ICTs for downloading weather information relevant to coastal ¢shing. In India, states have laws about land ownership ceilings and the redistribution of surplus lands to the landless. Obviously, knowledge about these laws and transparency of the land records would help the poor to assert their rights. Andhra Pradesh state has taken the initiative to digitize the land records. States like Karnataka and Tamilnadu are taking measures to do the same. However, it does not mean that the landless will get their land as a result of the digitization of records. What such digitization and subsequent easy accessibility to land records can do is to promote awareness among the poor. Once they are aware of their entitlements, the poor can be mobilized to assert their rights to land and other productive assets.11
M A R K ET I N FOR M AT ION It is said that economics has historically focused on making the buying and selling of goods and services as e⁄cient as possible. Two Nobel Prize winners, Professors William Vickery and James A Mirrlees, have shown that the transmission of information is equally important for a market economy, especially in cases where there is an incentive for people to not tell the truth.12 In India, NGOs and local agencies are working to ensure that marginal farmers, artisans, livestock owners and other small producers get a reasonable price while selling products; digitization of market information has greatly helped in this regard. In Punjab State, farmers are now selling their produce through online auctioning at farmerbazaar.com. The portal began last year. The advantage of this system is that the producers come to know the best price before clinching a deal. The middleman cannot exploit the seller by the former’ knowing that the system does not allow the seller to shift his produce to another place for a more competitive price. After all, transport accounts for 30 per cent of the cost. The transparency of the on-line process checks market manipulations as £uctuations are arrested and prices become more uniform across the various markets, each of which bids according to its demand. The site also ensures a payment guarantee to the farmer, and actually gives him a 15-day post-dated cheque the moment the deal is ¢nalized. 11 12
‘ICTs’ (2001) ICTs in rural poverty alleviation. Economic and Political Weekly 36(11), 917^920. ‘Gurus’ (1996) Gurus for the information age. Business Week October 26, p. 40.
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Another example of an information support system for farmers is the Warna Wired Village Project. The project area is a cluster of 70 villages in the districts of the Kolhapur and Sangli in Maharashtra State. The project has been jointly implemented by the National Informatics Centre (NIC), Maharashtra State, and the Warna Cooperative Society. The main server station of the ‘‘wired village’’ is situated at the Tahasahed Kore Institute of Engineering and Technology at Warna Nagar. A router is used to establish a WAN link to remote computer booths from the main computer centre. Information sought by the farmers relates to crop cultivation practices, land development, pesticides, disease control, marketing details, and the bill payment status of sugarcane and dairy products. Apart from information retrieval, there are two client-based applications to serve the needs of the farmer: (a) The Diary Information System and (b) The Sugarcane Information System. The members of two types of cooperatives working in villages of Maharashtra, i.e., dairy and sugarcane, get the bene¢ts of these systems. Moreover, villages are linked with the Directorate of Marketing in Pune, which arranges for farmers to get information on rates of vegetables, fruits, and other crops. The Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF), makers of Amul products, is now using ICT for the purpose of integrating its 12 member dairies and 1000 village cooperative societies. GCMMF also operates India’s ¢rst national cyberstore functioning in about 120 cities. All this has been made possible by an IT network which links the production centres with sales o⁄ces and dealers. The National Diary Development Board (NDDB) is also making use of computers and telecommunications to connect villages selling milk to union cooperatives. NDDB is now linked to 1000 villages, and most importantly, the middlemen have been e¡ectively sidelined with the help of the computer. NDDB has also started a computerized butter fat assessment system. The villagers feel that it has improved price realisation at the producer level. (Bedi et al., p. 199)13 The Honeybee Network of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, has taken an initiative to register the innovations made by farmers. Public registration of these innovations by NGOs allows the knowledge to spread. The use of digital media and audio and video capabilities make these innovations accessible to those who cannot read the text. The spread of these innovations eventually helps increase the productivity of resources. 13 Bedi, K., Singh, P.J. & Srivastava, S. (2001) Government @net: new governance opportunities for India. New Delhi: Sage.
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Many of these ICT-based projects are meant for producers who have gained rights over resources like land, animals, and other assets. As cooperative ventures, quite a few of these can play a vital role in enhancing the social capital of India. Social capital is all about the way citizens cooperate, form groups, and begin to trust each other. Democracy £ourishes in those societies where citizens are active in voluntary associations. The problem is that one cannot legislate social capital overnight. It depends on peoples’ temperaments and it is built over a period of time. I N F OR M ATION A N D G OV E R NA NC E Electronic governance can bring greater transparency and simplicity in the government’s relationship with business and the public. It has been said that Successful e-government is, at most, 20 percent about technology and 80 per cent about people and organisations. It is a mechanism that turns governments on their heads, from being producer-led, ministerially con¢ned, developmentally-blinkered institutions to being customer oriented service providers (‘Electronic’, p. VIII).14
In India, major changes are being introduced today in the name of good governance, social justice, and reforms. The World Bank has identi¢ed four determinant factors for good governance: (i) public sector management; (ii) accountability; (iii) the legal framework for development; and (iv) information and transparency. Moreover, the 64th and 73rd Amendments of the Indian constitution provide for Gram Panchayat (i.e., the village assembly) administration. Thus, a common citizen can participate in the decision-making process, for which the person must be information literate. As a result of these factors, the Indian government has initiated plans and programmes to provide access to o⁄cial information in electronic form which has been enumerated in the IT Action Plan document, which reads in pertinent part: (a) The government will make o⁄cial information, other than that having a direct bearing on security, available to the public. NIC will be empowered to do so. (b) The District Information System (DISNIC) plan shall be made widespread and databases will be updated on-line. The Court Information System (COURTIS) for legal matters, the Parliament Information System (PARLIS), and the 14 ‘Electronic’ (2001) Electronic government: online opportunity to transform administrations and services at all levels. Financial Times: IT Review June 20, p. 8.
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Computerised Rural Information System (CRISP) databases shall be updated on-line over the NICNET (i.e., the NIC network). (c) A ‘citizen’s charter’ for e¡ective and responsive administration in terms of time bound service to the public shall be framed and implemented under the aegis of the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances. It will be made available on the o⁄cial Website ‘‘India Image’’. In addition, several other initiatives have been taken with regard to data security systems and cyber laws. They include (i) the preparation of a National Computerised Records Security Document; (ii) the establishment of an information security agency to play the role of cyber cops; (iii) the framing of a National Policy on Information Security, Privacy, and Data Protection Act for the handling of computerized data; (iv) the handling of cyber infractions within the legal framework of the Ministry of Law, Justice, and Company A¡airs; (v) a procedure for keeping records in paper form to be restricted and all old records to be kept in electronic/magnetic/optical media; and, (vi) modi¢cations in the Indian Telegraph Act (1885), the Indian Post O⁄ce Act of 1888, and the Indian Wireless Telegraphy Act of 1993, keeping in view the growing predominance of IT. (Bedi et al. pp. 159^160).13 An important policy decision has been taken by the government with regard to socio-economic data collected by government agencies through statistical operations like censuses and surveys. A National Policy on the Dissemination of Statistical Data has been approved and it endorses the view that easy accessibility of data will encourage research studies and in-depth analyses of various aspects of the socio-economic life of the Indian population. According to this policy, researchers can have access to unpublished data in electronic form. However, in order to maintain the privacy or con¢dentiality provision of collection according to the Statistics Act (1953), the unit level data (i.e., a household or an enterprise) is to be released after deleting identi¢cation marks. Recently, the Indian government has drawn an ambitious plan for speedy disposal of court cases. It is a scheme for making justice easily accessible to people by digitizing the records of courts in four metropolitan cities, i.e., Delhi, Calcutta, Mumbai, and Chennai. The litigants would be able to access the various orders and learn the status of their pending cases by merely pressing a key on a computer connected to the Internet. In states like Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Tamilnadu, and Kerala several measures have been taken to put e-governance machinery into action. Maharashtra has entered into an agreement with World Tel, a private limited company in the UK, to work on developing statewide Internet
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connectivity. World Tel has been asked to create the infrastructure and build an organization that will operate a community Internet centre on a commercial basis. The purpose is to use the Internet in areas like (a) admissions to schools and colleges; (b) job searches; (c) health care; (d) public distribution; (e) public grievances; (f) distance education; (f) tourism; (h) agricultural and crop management; (i) disaster warnings; (j) housing schemes; (k) land records; and (l) water management. Andhra Pradesh has published Vision 2020, a document promising Andhra Pradesh residents with ‘‘one shop non-stop’’ services by making automated services available round the clock and providing ‘‘information kiosks’’ accessible to all. The report also predicts that Andhra Pradesh will be fully literate by 2010 and that poverty will be eradicated by 2020.15 In Tamilnadu, the district Tiruvarur has networked many government o⁄ces. This has been done mostly due to the e¡orts of the District Collector, whose Revenue Department has been computerized. All the seven block o⁄ces (i.e., administrative units under a district) have network computers attached to a server. The revenue o⁄cers do their dayto-day work on-line, which has resulted in Jamabanthi (i.e., the annual settlement of village accounts) being conducted on-line. The district has also established a data warehouse of land records accessible to the general public. In Kerala, an on-line healthcare system has been introduced and it is showing great promise. The Cancernet Project facilitates on-line cancer detection and patient follow-up for the entire state of Kerala. The project is funded by the Ministry of Information Technology and is implemented through the Regional Cancer Centre (RCC), Thiruvananthapuram. The Website of the RCC provides general information on cancer and tips on early detection. The public can interact with experts through the Website. The answers to their queries are provided through e-mail. In general, one can say that a lot of initiatives have been taken by the Indian government and certain states to introduce e-governance. Yet there is a general belief among sceptics that due to certain inherent weaknesses of our administrative system, e-governance cannot create social opportunities for the poorer section of the society. A critic observes: The apprehension is that while e-governance might work wonders for the limited few among the elite, it might bypass the vast majority of commoners. As of now, all electronic impulses tend to get dissipated in the face of the tangled maze of complex procedures and practices. (ICTs, 2001)11 15 Bandyopadhyay, D. (2001) Andhra Pradesh: looking beyond vision 2020. Economic and Political Weekly 36(11), 900^901.
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Critics have advocated a thorough overhaul of the procedures of administration. India has so far followed a British style of administration. In Great Britain, the O⁄cial Secrets Act guards national security by rendering inaccessible to the public certain categories of o⁄cial information. India’s O⁄cial Secrets Act of 1923 stipulates that, unless authorized by general or speci¢c orders, no o⁄cial shall communicate to another o⁄cial or a non-o⁄cial any information or document which has come into his possession in the course of his o⁄cial duties. However, in pursuance of a policy of openness and transparency, the Indian government has recognized the importance of access to information. Unfortunately, the bureaucrats and those dealing with o⁄cial records are skeptical about this new approach and tend to follow the old practices and procedures. Other daunting factors include the infrastructural requirements for e-governance. The IT Action Plan envisaged by the government calls for an ‘‘info-infrastructure drive’’ aimed at establishing a world class system with ¢bre-optic networks, requiring concomitant capital investments. However, keeping in view the performance of the telecommunications sector, this action plan should not be treated as a distant dream. At the beginning of 1990’s, telephone connectivity was the major ICT issue in India. The government set itself the target of bringing down the waiting time for a telephone connection to less than a year by 2000. Though it was a tough target, the government achieved it. At present, there is a zero waiting period for a telephone in many places. On the whole, e-governance in India can be achieved to some extent if certain changes are made in government procedures. Apart from this, an info-literate population and a proper ICT infrastructure are also required.
CH A LLENGES
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In India, the information age is in its £edgling stage. The impact of the digital era is con¢ned to certain parts of the country where initiatives taken by the local bodies with government support have paid handsome dividends. The bene¢ts of digital information have been so far derived largely by the English-educated middle class who have access to education and the ICT infrastructure. However, this new age poses several challenges to Indian society. The professions, the work environment, governance, education and learning, etc., are all in£uenced by the continuing glut of digitized information. One of the major challenges everyone confronts is the explosion in the volume of digitized information. This has been made possible by the
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declining cost of data storage and communication. Now people are somewhat comfortable with the terms like megabytes (i.e., digital equivalents of a novel-length book, which can be stored on a computer £oppy disk). They are now forced to think in terms of gigabytes (1000 books) and terabytes (1 million books). The largest of today’s data storage productsFrefrigerator size boxes made by companies such as EMCFhold nearly 20 terabytes of data, the rough equivalent of the US Library of Congress!16 In fact, the amount of available information is not the only thing that has changed. The accessibility of information has also increased. Devices like network connections have made it possible for a person to retrieve large volumes of information. Thus, material that was available to an elite few is now accessible through networks. The Internet and the World Wide Web are now allowing individuals to create data. As a result, there has been an unprecedented increase in the use and production of information by individuals. Thus, data gets democratized. For developing countries, creation of contents in digitized formats is a major challenge. In India, content development has not received enough attention and, taking a cue therefrom, some Indian intellectuals complain that the information age is the age of information imperialism. A critic writes: Information age [sic] is an age of paradox. It comes with the promise of liberation and the threat of oppression; it opens up the possibility of greater freedom but not without the chances of greater control. (Sinha, p. 4180).17
The digitisation of information pertaining to both India’s culture and heritage is currently the country’s most pressing IT need. It would release the country from the clutch of the foreign media. The creation of a multi-media CD-ROM depicting classic Indian works from the Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts, New Delhi, is a laudable e¡ort. Other prominent institutions like the National Library, the National Museum, the National Archives of India, and the Asiatic Society are expected to digitize their rare collections, thereby making possible the worldwide marketing of India’s rich cultural heritage. The proposal to establish a Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL) for Ayurveda (i.e., the Indian system of medicine) was recently approved by the Indian government. The World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) has suggested that the library should 16
Lyman, P. & Varian, H.R. (2001) The democratization of data. Harvard Business Review 79(1),
137. 17 Sinha, D. (2000) Info-age and Indian intellectuals: an unfashionable poser. Economic and Political Weekly 35(48), 4188^4194.
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be partially linked with the International Patent Classi¢cation (IPC) Code. TKDL will comprise 35,000 formulations collated from 35 texts available in the public domain. The project will make the same material available in English, German, and Japanese through a Website. At a seminar organized by the Global Knowledge Partners in New Delhi, it was observed that it is seemingly not possible to create a knowledge society from the current content of the Internet. (Bawdon, p. 145).18 There is a need to create information sources for users in rural areas. Even today, there are hardly any soil maps of basic value depicting land capability or land suitability. Data about water resources are scrappy and mostly approximations. Another challenge for India is to create a climate of openness and transparency so that e-governance and e-commerce can work without hindrance. It would also help in curbing corruption. In India, the best way to curb corruption is to curtail the power of middlemen or clerks who stand as barriers between the o⁄cial rules and procedures, and the common citizens. A sociologist has observed: Socialism created the dominance of the ¢lariat [sic]. It enshrined the divine right of clerks. The clerk was king. Modernity was seen as a huge expanding cake. Whether it was access to education, the city, energy, industry, the clerk controlled it.19
In rural India, ¢ghting corruption with the help of activist groups is now becoming a common practice. In Rajasthan, Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS), i.e., the Workers’ and Farmers’ Power Organisation, has waged a campaign to secure the right of ordinary people to gain access to information held by government o⁄cials. One of the most important innovations of MKSS has been the collective method for analysing the o⁄cial information it has obtained from some sympathetic bureaucrats.20 In some of the states, like Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Goa, etc., the Freedom of Information Bill has been passed, which aims at transparency and accountability in administration by making government documents open to public scrutiny. However, there are provisions in these acts, according to which the government can withhold certain categories of information from the public. The most important requirement is the amendment of the O⁄cial Secrets Act of 1923 18 Bawden, R. (2000) Tasknet, New Delhi, November 23^24, 1999: Report of meeting. IFLA Journal 26(2), 143^145. 19 Visvanathan, S. & Sethi, H. (1999) De¢ning corruption: modernity as chronicle of middlemen. The Times of India, October 9, p. 12. 20 Jenkins, R. & Goetz, A.M. (1999) Accounts and accountability: theoretical implications of the right-to-information movement in India. Third World Quarterly 20(3), 603^622.
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and arranging institutional-level procedures for the disclosure of public records. With the arrival of the Internet and World Wide Web, the library profession now has a better opportunity to showcase its dynamism and talent. There is a demand for value-added content summaries of digital information in the form of knowledgeable abstracts, annotated bibliographies, and intelligent indices (i.e., ranking the citations, segmenting the citations, etc.). Moreover, there is immense scope for creating content in Indian languages with technologies like Unicode. Indian scripts soon will be supported by most computers. In India, the profession of librarianship is largely con¢ned to book or document-based services. The involvement of librarians in literacy or other education-related projects is mostly uncommon. In a seminar held in New Delhi in November 1999, experts have observed that in Asia, public libraries usually remain detached from information literacy programmes. On the other hand, there are young people operating NGOs in rural areas. They are committed to helping rural people obtaining information, though they lack professional skills and expertise. However, this lack of skill is temporary. Eventually, they will establish rural information centres and bypass the existing libraries and librarians who will be left with building and materials increasingly irrelevant to villagers’ information needs (this will be ful¢lled by the Internet). (Bawden, p. 144).18 A recent survey conducted in Karnataka State to evaluate public library services observes: A continued concentration on serving only the current clientele isolated the libraries from women, children and very poor. The literate clientele in rural areas was becoming more restive, looking for the technical and management information needed in a liberalising, agrarian market economy (Heitzman and Asundi, p. 155).21
It is evident that a combined e¡ort of public libraries, agricultural extension workers, rural community centres/information centres, and NGOs working on projects like literacy development will produce results. The growth in ICT has resulted in a transformation of the concept of work and workplace in India, particularly regarding women workers. While teleworking is providing new opportunities to Indian women, there is a need to revise labour laws and practices. But teleworking must not degenerate into yet another means of extracting women’s labour at relatively low wages. In India, the regulatory climate for the ICT sector has been liberalized and the government consults with private sector ISPs. A key 21 Heitzman, J. & Asundi, A.Y. (2000) Evaluation of public libraries in India: case of Karnataka. Information Development 16(3), 142^155.
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challenge lies in creating a level playing ¢eld where both governmentowned and private sector ISPs can survive. Some initiatives have been taken to extend the Internet beyond urban areas and rural regions via Internet kiosks, community centres mostly under the aegis of NGOs, and local administrations. For the software industry, the Internet is the key means for tapping into the global IT market. The importance of connectivity is being realised by other sectors of the economy as well, and the need to play into e-commerce or e-business will continue to be a major impetus for improving the Internet environment. India is a democratic country. Americans use the term cyberdemocracy to mean the exercise of democratic principles in cyberspace. It implies an electronic form of direct democracy beyond that of local ‘ballot’ initiatives during elections. It also envisages that future governance in the 21st century will include plebiscites and referenda that would impose the public will directly upon government policy (Ogden, p. 128).22 Indians do not have Western levels of social savvy and have a limited ICT infrastructure. The country is not in a position to achieve cyberdemocracy in the near future.
C ONC LU DIN G R EM A R K S India is a society in transition. Contemporary India ¢nds itself in a situation in which one has to deal with social segments moving in the most sophisticated ICT areas. It coexists with other segments of society consisting of poor illiterates still in the ‘‘bullock cart’’ age. The use of ICT for the purpose of alleviating poverty is limited to certain areas. NGOs and local agencies are making sincere e¡orts to make the rural masses info-literate so that they can exert pressure on local administrations to avoid unscrupulous middlemen. In India, while there is a great stress on ICT, neither information nor content development has received enough attention. Policy makers should view content as more important than conduits; and proper content management is possible only with the active involvement of information professionals. The information society will lead us to an economy that adds value through information, ideas and intelligence. The ‘‘Three I’’ economyFthis o¡ers a way out of the apparent clash between material growth and environmental erosion. Information, ideas, and intelligence 22 Ogden, M.R. (1996) Electronic power to the people: who is technology’s keeper on cyberspace frontier. Technological Forecasting and Social change 52(2&3), 119^133.
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consume few of the earth’s resources.23 There is an ethical need for guaranteeing that future generations will be heirs to the rich social traditions and abundant natural resources of the Indian subcontinent.
23
Handy, C (1995). Trust and the virtual organisation. Hardvard Business Review. 73(3), 49.
Literacy, Information, and Governance in the Digital Era: An Indian Scenario* P. R. GOSWAMIw
A B ST R AC T This paper presents an overview of the use of digital information in India for the purposes of poverty alleviation, the marketing of farm produce in rural areas, responsive governance, and provision of access to o⁄cial records and information. The paper also seeks to identify better ways of using information and communication technology for Indian national development. r 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.
I N T RODUC T ION Recent advances in digital information and communication technology (ICT) makes possible the development and dissemination of information through various forms and means of media on a local, national, and international level. ICT has produced marvels like the Internet, the World Wide Web, interactive multimedia, CD-ROMs, on-line digital libraries, etc. As a result, individuals now feel that they are members of an open information system not ¢xed by the locality or the institution.1 The information society is the parlance of today’s world. It is not just a product of or equivalent to ICT; rather, it is the product of an interplay of social and technological dynamics (Rosell, p. 29),2 which include: (a) Rapid progress in information processing and telecommunications, and the growing link between the two. *Paper submitted to ASIST Special Interest Group of International Information Issues. (International Paper Contest, 2001). w Librarian, Faculty of Management Studies, University of Delhi, Delhi 110007, India. Tel.: +91766-7264, +91-576-4889. E-mail: [email protected], [email protected] 1 Katsirikou, A. & Sefertzi, E. (2000) Innovation in everyday life of libraries. Technovation 20, 705. 2 Rosell, S.A. (1997) Governing in an information society. Technological Forecasting and Social Change 54(1), 29^30.
1057^2317/02/$ - see front matter r 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.
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(b) The emergence of more informed and educated groups which can assert a role in governance. (c) The provision for better access to information and development in mass media through ICT. (d) A higher degree of specialization in knowledge-based economies. These key characteristics of an information society are manifest in developed countries of the West. However, new innovations in ICT also offer opportunities to developing countries. India now has better ways to use the nation’s knowledge base. Digitization allows for integration of graphics, texts, video, and sound; it also provides information services in di¡erent forms. Moreover, the liberalization of the communications sector facilitates the use of ICT for the real-time exchange of information. The aim of this paper is to present an ambivalent view of the use of ICT in India for the purpose of the success of the market economy, good governance, social justice, and development. Some of these ideals are somewhat analogous to the notions of transparency and accountability in administration as well as provision of access to information. The paper also discusses the role of literacy and information in poverty alleviation programmes. I N DI A : A P ROF IL E India is one of the oldest civilizations in the world with a rich cultural heritage and a number of distinctive regions. It covers an area of 32,87,263 km2 with a population of more than 1 billion. India, a union of 28 States and seven centrally administered Union Territories, is a democratic republic with a parliamentary system of government. During the 55 years of its independence, the country has made progress in development. Agricultural production has increased many times over, and India is now ranked in 10th place behind the industrialized countries of the world. (India, p. 1).3 In general, people from the developed world view India as a densely populated country with problems like poverty, malnutrition, and unemployment. It has a vast pool of human resources. A recent monograph released by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as an analysis of India’s macro-economic policies and ¢scal health observes: India is a land of contrast. More than one billion people live in a vast territory among architectural and sculptural wonders that give vivid testimony to its 3 India, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Research, Reference and Training Division (2001) India, 2001: a reference annual. New Delhi: Publication Division.
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powerful and age old customs. Yet, there is also a very modern face of India which is responding to the growing forces of globalisation and where IT has found a fertile environment (Collen, p. 1).4
From this report’s perspective, modern India is a country with a liberalized economy. The reforms undertaken so far have promoted economic growth. As regards the IT sector, India has done reasonably well in software development. According to the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM), the software export statistics for 2000^2001 are expected to be worth $6.2 billion, an increase of over 55% over the $4 billion achieved in the previous year. In the year 2000, 185 of Fortune 500 companies outsourced their software requirements to Indian companies. India has been focusing more on IT services rather than products.5 I N F OR M AT ION A N D P OV E RT Y A L L EV I AT ION The World Development Report (2000^2001) contains a statement by the President of the World Bank who observes that poverty can be reduced by spreading technology and information to needy populations worldwide. It is important to bridge the gap between the digital divide as well as knowledge divide. The report also narrates the story of a woman who bene¢ted by information obtained through cellular phone technology: I always sell eggs to middlemen. In the past, whatever prices they o¡ered, I accepted because I had no idea about going prices of the eggsy last week, the middleman came and desired to pay me 12 takka per hali (four units)y keeping him waiting, I rushed to check the price through the village phone. The price was 14 takka per hali of eggs in nearby markets. I came back and refused to sell to him at the lower pricesy After a brief haggling, we agreed to buy and sell at 13 takka per hali. Halima Khatuun, a poor illiterate woman in Bangladesh (World Bank, p 73).6
Such instances of poor people reaping bene¢ts from ICT is not uncommon on the Indian subcontinent. However, poverty and illiteracy are two major problems throughout India’s countryside. According to 4 Collen, T., Raynold, P. & Towe, E. (Eds) (2001) India at the cross roads: sustaining growth and reducing poverty. Washington, DC: International Monetary Fund. 5 Mehta, D. (2001) Hardsell software: take the down out of slowdown. Times of India April 10, p. 12. 6 World Bank (2001) World development report 2000: Attacking poverty. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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the Census of India, 2001 ¢gures, the literacy rate in India is now 65 per cent. It is also estimated that 27 per cent of India’s population live below the poverty line. Most of the poor and illiterate are agricultural labourers or small artisans, and economists have said that programmes to assure a modicum of economic security for the poor and to guarantee equality of opportunity for all have faltered in recent years (Arrow, p. 1).7 Of late, NGOs and local bodies of certain states in India are exploring the ways and means by which ICT can be utilized for the purpose of ameliorating the conditions of the poor. Research results have shown that literacy is a determining factor in the economic status of a household. The distribution of literacy across households does matter, due to the external e¡ects of literacy. One can draw the conclusion that an illiterate person’s ability to transform various kinds of informational inputs into ‘functioning’ is tied to the literacy status of the household.8 There are examples of informational inputs, which are meant for disadvantaged groups. They include: (a) Government circulars/noti¢cations intimating social assistance to physically handicapped widows and others. (b) Lea£ets released by NGOs advising rural people of their speci¢c rights to information. (c) Public health o⁄ce bulletins on the advantages of oral rehydration. In order to provide the correct information to the right person at a convenient place and time, a number of projects have been started by NGOs in rural India. One of the objectives of these projects is to enhance the information literacy of the poor. To be information literate, a person must be able to recognize what information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use e¡ectively the needed information.9 In Rajasthan State, Neyla, a village had the privilege of having an Information Kiosk Rajnidhi on 23 March 2000 when US President Bill Clinton visited the village to observe the functioning of a Gram Panchayat (i.e. village assembly). Rajnidhi is a project geared to use ICT, especially the Internet, to replace the traditional form of governance with a more open and responsive service delivery system. 7
Arrow, K. et al. (2000) Meritocracy and economic inequality. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Basu, K., Foster, J.E. & Subramanian, S. (2000) Isolated and proximate illiteracy and why these concepts matter in measuring literacy and designing education programme. Economic and Political Weekly 35(2), 35^36. 9 American Library Association (1999) Final report of the Presidential Committee on Information Literacy. Chicago: American Library Association. 8
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Rajnidhi information kiosks, when made functional all over a federal state, would provide citizens with access to information on health, family planning, immunization schedules for children, employment, transportation, distance education, agriculture, water and electricity connections, birth and death registration, approved housing societies, and rates of land and building taxes. In order to involve citizens in democratic processes, Rajnidhi also provides opportunities to participate in state policy making. Through a user-friendly interface, citizens can communicate their suggestions and complaints to the Chief Minister and senior o⁄cials. Another prominent example of information facilitation is the Gyandoot programme, a community-owned, self-sustainable, low-cost rural Intranet model in Madhya Pradesh state. The project has attracted worldwide attention. In this project, computers in 31 village centres have been wired through an Intranet network. These information kiosks are called Soochanalayas. They provide user-charge-based service to rural people on wide ranging topics such as (a) agriculture produce auction centre rates, (b) copies of land records, (c) on-line registration of applications, (d) on-line public grievance ¢ling, (e) rural e-mail, (f) village auction sites, (g) on-line matrimonial sites, (h) information regarding government programmes, (i) career counselling services, (j) expert programmes (questions can be asked by villagers about the latest techniques, new technologies, etc. regarding agriculture, animal husbandry, health, and legal opinions), (k) On-line application formats required by the local administration. At present, there are 31 Soochanalayas; the ¢rst 20 were started by a village committee and community; the remaining 11 were started by private entrepreneurs. The local administration decided to expand the project when village youths started new centres as private enterprises. The Gyandoot Samiti, a registered society to support the project has developed software in Hindi (India’s national language) for Intranet and various other services.10 In addition to these, NGOs like M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) have shown that their knowledge centres in villages have resulted in higher demand from the poor for access to 10
Vittal, N. (2001) Innovative e-governance. The Economic Times February 10.
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government-sponsored programmes. MSSRF is training the ¢shermen in coastal areas to use ICTs for downloading weather information relevant to coastal ¢shing. In India, states have laws about land ownership ceilings and the redistribution of surplus lands to the landless. Obviously, knowledge about these laws and transparency of the land records would help the poor to assert their rights. Andhra Pradesh state has taken the initiative to digitize the land records. States like Karnataka and Tamilnadu are taking measures to do the same. However, it does not mean that the landless will get their land as a result of the digitization of records. What such digitization and subsequent easy accessibility to land records can do is to promote awareness among the poor. Once they are aware of their entitlements, the poor can be mobilized to assert their rights to land and other productive assets.11
M A R K ET I N FOR M AT ION It is said that economics has historically focused on making the buying and selling of goods and services as e⁄cient as possible. Two Nobel Prize winners, Professors William Vickery and James A Mirrlees, have shown that the transmission of information is equally important for a market economy, especially in cases where there is an incentive for people to not tell the truth.12 In India, NGOs and local agencies are working to ensure that marginal farmers, artisans, livestock owners and other small producers get a reasonable price while selling products; digitization of market information has greatly helped in this regard. In Punjab State, farmers are now selling their produce through online auctioning at farmerbazaar.com. The portal began last year. The advantage of this system is that the producers come to know the best price before clinching a deal. The middleman cannot exploit the seller by the former’ knowing that the system does not allow the seller to shift his produce to another place for a more competitive price. After all, transport accounts for 30 per cent of the cost. The transparency of the on-line process checks market manipulations as £uctuations are arrested and prices become more uniform across the various markets, each of which bids according to its demand. The site also ensures a payment guarantee to the farmer, and actually gives him a 15-day post-dated cheque the moment the deal is ¢nalized. 11 12
‘ICTs’ (2001) ICTs in rural poverty alleviation. Economic and Political Weekly 36(11), 917^920. ‘Gurus’ (1996) Gurus for the information age. Business Week October 26, p. 40.
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Another example of an information support system for farmers is the Warna Wired Village Project. The project area is a cluster of 70 villages in the districts of the Kolhapur and Sangli in Maharashtra State. The project has been jointly implemented by the National Informatics Centre (NIC), Maharashtra State, and the Warna Cooperative Society. The main server station of the ‘‘wired village’’ is situated at the Tahasahed Kore Institute of Engineering and Technology at Warna Nagar. A router is used to establish a WAN link to remote computer booths from the main computer centre. Information sought by the farmers relates to crop cultivation practices, land development, pesticides, disease control, marketing details, and the bill payment status of sugarcane and dairy products. Apart from information retrieval, there are two client-based applications to serve the needs of the farmer: (a) The Diary Information System and (b) The Sugarcane Information System. The members of two types of cooperatives working in villages of Maharashtra, i.e., dairy and sugarcane, get the bene¢ts of these systems. Moreover, villages are linked with the Directorate of Marketing in Pune, which arranges for farmers to get information on rates of vegetables, fruits, and other crops. The Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF), makers of Amul products, is now using ICT for the purpose of integrating its 12 member dairies and 1000 village cooperative societies. GCMMF also operates India’s ¢rst national cyberstore functioning in about 120 cities. All this has been made possible by an IT network which links the production centres with sales o⁄ces and dealers. The National Diary Development Board (NDDB) is also making use of computers and telecommunications to connect villages selling milk to union cooperatives. NDDB is now linked to 1000 villages, and most importantly, the middlemen have been e¡ectively sidelined with the help of the computer. NDDB has also started a computerized butter fat assessment system. The villagers feel that it has improved price realisation at the producer level. (Bedi et al., p. 199)13 The Honeybee Network of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, has taken an initiative to register the innovations made by farmers. Public registration of these innovations by NGOs allows the knowledge to spread. The use of digital media and audio and video capabilities make these innovations accessible to those who cannot read the text. The spread of these innovations eventually helps increase the productivity of resources. 13 Bedi, K., Singh, P.J. & Srivastava, S. (2001) Government @net: new governance opportunities for India. New Delhi: Sage.
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Many of these ICT-based projects are meant for producers who have gained rights over resources like land, animals, and other assets. As cooperative ventures, quite a few of these can play a vital role in enhancing the social capital of India. Social capital is all about the way citizens cooperate, form groups, and begin to trust each other. Democracy £ourishes in those societies where citizens are active in voluntary associations. The problem is that one cannot legislate social capital overnight. It depends on peoples’ temperaments and it is built over a period of time. I N F OR M ATION A N D G OV E R NA NC E Electronic governance can bring greater transparency and simplicity in the government’s relationship with business and the public. It has been said that Successful e-government is, at most, 20 percent about technology and 80 per cent about people and organisations. It is a mechanism that turns governments on their heads, from being producer-led, ministerially con¢ned, developmentally-blinkered institutions to being customer oriented service providers (‘Electronic’, p. VIII).14
In India, major changes are being introduced today in the name of good governance, social justice, and reforms. The World Bank has identi¢ed four determinant factors for good governance: (i) public sector management; (ii) accountability; (iii) the legal framework for development; and (iv) information and transparency. Moreover, the 64th and 73rd Amendments of the Indian constitution provide for Gram Panchayat (i.e., the village assembly) administration. Thus, a common citizen can participate in the decision-making process, for which the person must be information literate. As a result of these factors, the Indian government has initiated plans and programmes to provide access to o⁄cial information in electronic form which has been enumerated in the IT Action Plan document, which reads in pertinent part: (a) The government will make o⁄cial information, other than that having a direct bearing on security, available to the public. NIC will be empowered to do so. (b) The District Information System (DISNIC) plan shall be made widespread and databases will be updated on-line. The Court Information System (COURTIS) for legal matters, the Parliament Information System (PARLIS), and the 14 ‘Electronic’ (2001) Electronic government: online opportunity to transform administrations and services at all levels. Financial Times: IT Review June 20, p. 8.
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Computerised Rural Information System (CRISP) databases shall be updated on-line over the NICNET (i.e., the NIC network). (c) A ‘citizen’s charter’ for e¡ective and responsive administration in terms of time bound service to the public shall be framed and implemented under the aegis of the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances. It will be made available on the o⁄cial Website ‘‘India Image’’. In addition, several other initiatives have been taken with regard to data security systems and cyber laws. They include (i) the preparation of a National Computerised Records Security Document; (ii) the establishment of an information security agency to play the role of cyber cops; (iii) the framing of a National Policy on Information Security, Privacy, and Data Protection Act for the handling of computerized data; (iv) the handling of cyber infractions within the legal framework of the Ministry of Law, Justice, and Company A¡airs; (v) a procedure for keeping records in paper form to be restricted and all old records to be kept in electronic/magnetic/optical media; and, (vi) modi¢cations in the Indian Telegraph Act (1885), the Indian Post O⁄ce Act of 1888, and the Indian Wireless Telegraphy Act of 1993, keeping in view the growing predominance of IT. (Bedi et al. pp. 159^160).13 An important policy decision has been taken by the government with regard to socio-economic data collected by government agencies through statistical operations like censuses and surveys. A National Policy on the Dissemination of Statistical Data has been approved and it endorses the view that easy accessibility of data will encourage research studies and in-depth analyses of various aspects of the socio-economic life of the Indian population. According to this policy, researchers can have access to unpublished data in electronic form. However, in order to maintain the privacy or con¢dentiality provision of collection according to the Statistics Act (1953), the unit level data (i.e., a household or an enterprise) is to be released after deleting identi¢cation marks. Recently, the Indian government has drawn an ambitious plan for speedy disposal of court cases. It is a scheme for making justice easily accessible to people by digitizing the records of courts in four metropolitan cities, i.e., Delhi, Calcutta, Mumbai, and Chennai. The litigants would be able to access the various orders and learn the status of their pending cases by merely pressing a key on a computer connected to the Internet. In states like Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Tamilnadu, and Kerala several measures have been taken to put e-governance machinery into action. Maharashtra has entered into an agreement with World Tel, a private limited company in the UK, to work on developing statewide Internet
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connectivity. World Tel has been asked to create the infrastructure and build an organization that will operate a community Internet centre on a commercial basis. The purpose is to use the Internet in areas like (a) admissions to schools and colleges; (b) job searches; (c) health care; (d) public distribution; (e) public grievances; (f) distance education; (f) tourism; (h) agricultural and crop management; (i) disaster warnings; (j) housing schemes; (k) land records; and (l) water management. Andhra Pradesh has published Vision 2020, a document promising Andhra Pradesh residents with ‘‘one shop non-stop’’ services by making automated services available round the clock and providing ‘‘information kiosks’’ accessible to all. The report also predicts that Andhra Pradesh will be fully literate by 2010 and that poverty will be eradicated by 2020.15 In Tamilnadu, the district Tiruvarur has networked many government o⁄ces. This has been done mostly due to the e¡orts of the District Collector, whose Revenue Department has been computerized. All the seven block o⁄ces (i.e., administrative units under a district) have network computers attached to a server. The revenue o⁄cers do their dayto-day work on-line, which has resulted in Jamabanthi (i.e., the annual settlement of village accounts) being conducted on-line. The district has also established a data warehouse of land records accessible to the general public. In Kerala, an on-line healthcare system has been introduced and it is showing great promise. The Cancernet Project facilitates on-line cancer detection and patient follow-up for the entire state of Kerala. The project is funded by the Ministry of Information Technology and is implemented through the Regional Cancer Centre (RCC), Thiruvananthapuram. The Website of the RCC provides general information on cancer and tips on early detection. The public can interact with experts through the Website. The answers to their queries are provided through e-mail. In general, one can say that a lot of initiatives have been taken by the Indian government and certain states to introduce e-governance. Yet there is a general belief among sceptics that due to certain inherent weaknesses of our administrative system, e-governance cannot create social opportunities for the poorer section of the society. A critic observes: The apprehension is that while e-governance might work wonders for the limited few among the elite, it might bypass the vast majority of commoners. As of now, all electronic impulses tend to get dissipated in the face of the tangled maze of complex procedures and practices. (ICTs, 2001)11 15 Bandyopadhyay, D. (2001) Andhra Pradesh: looking beyond vision 2020. Economic and Political Weekly 36(11), 900^901.
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Critics have advocated a thorough overhaul of the procedures of administration. India has so far followed a British style of administration. In Great Britain, the O⁄cial Secrets Act guards national security by rendering inaccessible to the public certain categories of o⁄cial information. India’s O⁄cial Secrets Act of 1923 stipulates that, unless authorized by general or speci¢c orders, no o⁄cial shall communicate to another o⁄cial or a non-o⁄cial any information or document which has come into his possession in the course of his o⁄cial duties. However, in pursuance of a policy of openness and transparency, the Indian government has recognized the importance of access to information. Unfortunately, the bureaucrats and those dealing with o⁄cial records are skeptical about this new approach and tend to follow the old practices and procedures. Other daunting factors include the infrastructural requirements for e-governance. The IT Action Plan envisaged by the government calls for an ‘‘info-infrastructure drive’’ aimed at establishing a world class system with ¢bre-optic networks, requiring concomitant capital investments. However, keeping in view the performance of the telecommunications sector, this action plan should not be treated as a distant dream. At the beginning of 1990’s, telephone connectivity was the major ICT issue in India. The government set itself the target of bringing down the waiting time for a telephone connection to less than a year by 2000. Though it was a tough target, the government achieved it. At present, there is a zero waiting period for a telephone in many places. On the whole, e-governance in India can be achieved to some extent if certain changes are made in government procedures. Apart from this, an info-literate population and a proper ICT infrastructure are also required.
CH A LLENGES
AND
O P P ORT U N IT IE S
In India, the information age is in its £edgling stage. The impact of the digital era is con¢ned to certain parts of the country where initiatives taken by the local bodies with government support have paid handsome dividends. The bene¢ts of digital information have been so far derived largely by the English-educated middle class who have access to education and the ICT infrastructure. However, this new age poses several challenges to Indian society. The professions, the work environment, governance, education and learning, etc., are all in£uenced by the continuing glut of digitized information. One of the major challenges everyone confronts is the explosion in the volume of digitized information. This has been made possible by the
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declining cost of data storage and communication. Now people are somewhat comfortable with the terms like megabytes (i.e., digital equivalents of a novel-length book, which can be stored on a computer £oppy disk). They are now forced to think in terms of gigabytes (1000 books) and terabytes (1 million books). The largest of today’s data storage productsFrefrigerator size boxes made by companies such as EMCFhold nearly 20 terabytes of data, the rough equivalent of the US Library of Congress!16 In fact, the amount of available information is not the only thing that has changed. The accessibility of information has also increased. Devices like network connections have made it possible for a person to retrieve large volumes of information. Thus, material that was available to an elite few is now accessible through networks. The Internet and the World Wide Web are now allowing individuals to create data. As a result, there has been an unprecedented increase in the use and production of information by individuals. Thus, data gets democratized. For developing countries, creation of contents in digitized formats is a major challenge. In India, content development has not received enough attention and, taking a cue therefrom, some Indian intellectuals complain that the information age is the age of information imperialism. A critic writes: Information age [sic] is an age of paradox. It comes with the promise of liberation and the threat of oppression; it opens up the possibility of greater freedom but not without the chances of greater control. (Sinha, p. 4180).17
The digitisation of information pertaining to both India’s culture and heritage is currently the country’s most pressing IT need. It would release the country from the clutch of the foreign media. The creation of a multi-media CD-ROM depicting classic Indian works from the Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts, New Delhi, is a laudable e¡ort. Other prominent institutions like the National Library, the National Museum, the National Archives of India, and the Asiatic Society are expected to digitize their rare collections, thereby making possible the worldwide marketing of India’s rich cultural heritage. The proposal to establish a Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL) for Ayurveda (i.e., the Indian system of medicine) was recently approved by the Indian government. The World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) has suggested that the library should 16
Lyman, P. & Varian, H.R. (2001) The democratization of data. Harvard Business Review 79(1),
137. 17 Sinha, D. (2000) Info-age and Indian intellectuals: an unfashionable poser. Economic and Political Weekly 35(48), 4188^4194.
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be partially linked with the International Patent Classi¢cation (IPC) Code. TKDL will comprise 35,000 formulations collated from 35 texts available in the public domain. The project will make the same material available in English, German, and Japanese through a Website. At a seminar organized by the Global Knowledge Partners in New Delhi, it was observed that it is seemingly not possible to create a knowledge society from the current content of the Internet. (Bawdon, p. 145).18 There is a need to create information sources for users in rural areas. Even today, there are hardly any soil maps of basic value depicting land capability or land suitability. Data about water resources are scrappy and mostly approximations. Another challenge for India is to create a climate of openness and transparency so that e-governance and e-commerce can work without hindrance. It would also help in curbing corruption. In India, the best way to curb corruption is to curtail the power of middlemen or clerks who stand as barriers between the o⁄cial rules and procedures, and the common citizens. A sociologist has observed: Socialism created the dominance of the ¢lariat [sic]. It enshrined the divine right of clerks. The clerk was king. Modernity was seen as a huge expanding cake. Whether it was access to education, the city, energy, industry, the clerk controlled it.19
In rural India, ¢ghting corruption with the help of activist groups is now becoming a common practice. In Rajasthan, Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS), i.e., the Workers’ and Farmers’ Power Organisation, has waged a campaign to secure the right of ordinary people to gain access to information held by government o⁄cials. One of the most important innovations of MKSS has been the collective method for analysing the o⁄cial information it has obtained from some sympathetic bureaucrats.20 In some of the states, like Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Goa, etc., the Freedom of Information Bill has been passed, which aims at transparency and accountability in administration by making government documents open to public scrutiny. However, there are provisions in these acts, according to which the government can withhold certain categories of information from the public. The most important requirement is the amendment of the O⁄cial Secrets Act of 1923 18 Bawden, R. (2000) Tasknet, New Delhi, November 23^24, 1999: Report of meeting. IFLA Journal 26(2), 143^145. 19 Visvanathan, S. & Sethi, H. (1999) De¢ning corruption: modernity as chronicle of middlemen. The Times of India, October 9, p. 12. 20 Jenkins, R. & Goetz, A.M. (1999) Accounts and accountability: theoretical implications of the right-to-information movement in India. Third World Quarterly 20(3), 603^622.
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and arranging institutional-level procedures for the disclosure of public records. With the arrival of the Internet and World Wide Web, the library profession now has a better opportunity to showcase its dynamism and talent. There is a demand for value-added content summaries of digital information in the form of knowledgeable abstracts, annotated bibliographies, and intelligent indices (i.e., ranking the citations, segmenting the citations, etc.). Moreover, there is immense scope for creating content in Indian languages with technologies like Unicode. Indian scripts soon will be supported by most computers. In India, the profession of librarianship is largely con¢ned to book or document-based services. The involvement of librarians in literacy or other education-related projects is mostly uncommon. In a seminar held in New Delhi in November 1999, experts have observed that in Asia, public libraries usually remain detached from information literacy programmes. On the other hand, there are young people operating NGOs in rural areas. They are committed to helping rural people obtaining information, though they lack professional skills and expertise. However, this lack of skill is temporary. Eventually, they will establish rural information centres and bypass the existing libraries and librarians who will be left with building and materials increasingly irrelevant to villagers’ information needs (this will be ful¢lled by the Internet). (Bawden, p. 144).18 A recent survey conducted in Karnataka State to evaluate public library services observes: A continued concentration on serving only the current clientele isolated the libraries from women, children and very poor. The literate clientele in rural areas was becoming more restive, looking for the technical and management information needed in a liberalising, agrarian market economy (Heitzman and Asundi, p. 155).21
It is evident that a combined e¡ort of public libraries, agricultural extension workers, rural community centres/information centres, and NGOs working on projects like literacy development will produce results. The growth in ICT has resulted in a transformation of the concept of work and workplace in India, particularly regarding women workers. While teleworking is providing new opportunities to Indian women, there is a need to revise labour laws and practices. But teleworking must not degenerate into yet another means of extracting women’s labour at relatively low wages. In India, the regulatory climate for the ICT sector has been liberalized and the government consults with private sector ISPs. A key 21 Heitzman, J. & Asundi, A.Y. (2000) Evaluation of public libraries in India: case of Karnataka. Information Development 16(3), 142^155.
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challenge lies in creating a level playing ¢eld where both governmentowned and private sector ISPs can survive. Some initiatives have been taken to extend the Internet beyond urban areas and rural regions via Internet kiosks, community centres mostly under the aegis of NGOs, and local administrations. For the software industry, the Internet is the key means for tapping into the global IT market. The importance of connectivity is being realised by other sectors of the economy as well, and the need to play into e-commerce or e-business will continue to be a major impetus for improving the Internet environment. India is a democratic country. Americans use the term cyberdemocracy to mean the exercise of democratic principles in cyberspace. It implies an electronic form of direct democracy beyond that of local ‘ballot’ initiatives during elections. It also envisages that future governance in the 21st century will include plebiscites and referenda that would impose the public will directly upon government policy (Ogden, p. 128).22 Indians do not have Western levels of social savvy and have a limited ICT infrastructure. The country is not in a position to achieve cyberdemocracy in the near future.
C ONC LU DIN G R EM A R K S India is a society in transition. Contemporary India ¢nds itself in a situation in which one has to deal with social segments moving in the most sophisticated ICT areas. It coexists with other segments of society consisting of poor illiterates still in the ‘‘bullock cart’’ age. The use of ICT for the purpose of alleviating poverty is limited to certain areas. NGOs and local agencies are making sincere e¡orts to make the rural masses info-literate so that they can exert pressure on local administrations to avoid unscrupulous middlemen. In India, while there is a great stress on ICT, neither information nor content development has received enough attention. Policy makers should view content as more important than conduits; and proper content management is possible only with the active involvement of information professionals. The information society will lead us to an economy that adds value through information, ideas and intelligence. The ‘‘Three I’’ economyFthis o¡ers a way out of the apparent clash between material growth and environmental erosion. Information, ideas, and intelligence 22 Ogden, M.R. (1996) Electronic power to the people: who is technology’s keeper on cyberspace frontier. Technological Forecasting and Social change 52(2&3), 119^133.
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consume few of the earth’s resources.23 There is an ethical need for guaranteeing that future generations will be heirs to the rich social traditions and abundant natural resources of the Indian subcontinent.
23
Handy, C (1995). Trust and the virtual organisation. Hardvard Business Review. 73(3), 49.