Understanding Digital Divide in Indian Context

Three-Day Workshop
'Understanding Digital Divide in Indian Context'
Organized by CISRS and supported by WACC
11, 12, 13 July, 2008, Devanandan House CISRS, Bangalore


We, the twenty five Theological students coming from Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu meeting in Bangalore for the Three Day workshop organised by the CISRS from 11-13 July 2008 and deliberating on the theme Understanding Digital Divide in the Indian Context, submit the following statement for deliberation, adaptation and implementation by Theological Colleges and Churches.

We acknowledge that Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are revolutionizing the world on the one hand, while creating the Digital Divide on the other hand. We realise that the Divide is not created by the ICTs but already existing socio economic divide is getting manifested in the cyberspace.

We understand that the Digital Divide is not only based on the opportunities of access, infrastructure and competency, but also based on sociological factors such as gender, ethnicity, class, urban-rural dichotomy, geographical location, disability etc.

We also realise that the digital disparities are caused due to monopoly of the trans-national companies as the ICT research and development are not addressing the livelihood issues of the common people, but oriented towards making profit alone.

The governments who are supposed to frame policies for the welfare of the poor and deprived are in fact formulating ICT policies without consulting them and are withdrawing form welfare measures handing over the process of policy making and implementation to the corporates.

We uphold that the earth and its resources belong to all people and thus the electro magnetic spectrum also belongs to the people. Therefore we reject any exclusive claim over the spectrum either by corporations or by Governments.

We also affirm that the Information Communication Technologies should be put to use for the welfare of the common people and not for profit making at the cost of the people.

We uphold that ICTs and its various aspects such as Community media, social networking, open source software etc should be made available to the marginalised sections such as Women, Dalits, Aged, Disabled, Children etc to be utilised for their emancipation.

We reaffirm our prophetic role as Christian communicators and commit ourselves to convince the Church to realise its responsibility to address the issue of Digital Divide, to campaign for democratic values and justice through the social application of ICTs and to empower marginalised sections of people to derive the potential of ICTs for their development.

Category:

Nonprofits & Activism

Tags:

• Digital
• Divide
• India
• CISRS