 Hi everyone, very good morning from the US and then good evening to all my friends in India and Pakistan and welcome to this Davos dialogue on digital equity in India, Pakistan, and beyond, which is brought to you by Future Tents, which is a collaboration of New Big Magazine and the Arizona State University that explores impact of technology emerging technologies on society and by the global shape of Community Bangalore, which is a youth like community addressing civic and social issues related to sustainable fashion, conscious consumerism, mental health, and of course bridging the digital divide. My name is Joshy Saxena and I am your moderator for today. We have a fabulous panel discussion. A little bit about me. I'm a social innovation practitioner and project based consultant out of Bangalore. I serve as the global project coordinator for Hatebase, a central project that works with governments academia researchers to monitor hate speech online. We also analyze the correlation between online hate speech that can result in global violence. But just to give you a disclaimer, I'm not going to talk about hate speech online, although yes, the topic is directly related to it. I'm going to talk about this conversation can is also live streamed on Slate's YouTube channel. So you can also feel free to watch it there. You can also follow the conversation on Twitter using the hashtag digital equity by following Future Tents on Twitter. So now that we've begun, I'd also encourage everyone who's joined in to introduce yourselves on the chat and tell us where you are logging in from and what you expect to take away from this dialogue. To start us off, I'll talk a little briefly about Towers Labs and how it came to be. The Towers Labs is a global shaper community. Perhaps the first and the largest youth driven recovery plan, 10 week recovery plan to address the world's converging crisis after the year we've had so far. We've identified 10 pillars. Some of them are mental health, inclusive jobs, public health, conscious consumerism. This particular dialogue falls into the category of digital literacy and digital access. We're basically looking to inspire, mobilize and empower young people to shape the unprecedented grassroots global responses needed to address during the coronavirus pandemic and some of the ways that we did do it. We launched it on World Youth Day in the form of surveys and dialogues. So if you do want your voice to be heard, all of these responses would be aggregated and these also would be culminated into a youth recovery plan and a report in form of a report which could be presented. And so I think I just wanted to check the chat a bit and see if you're introducing yourselves. So yeah, I'm also going to now move on to introducing our lovely panelists. We have joining in from India. We have Amrita Chaudhary who is the director of CCAOI and representing the interests of the internet users and has been working in this space for over more than 15 years. Amrita is also the president of the internet society Delhi chapter. She's also United, United International Governance Forum Mac member. She's the vice chair of the Asia Pacific Regional IGF. She heads the women's special internet group of Internet Society and is also the nominating committee 2021 member ICANN. She's one of the founding members of the India School of Internet Governance, for which I was also a fellow for in 2019. And curates regularly for the Geneva Internet platform and advises and guides the youth IGF, which is a youth initiative in India and rural communities at the Internet Society. So very warm welcome to Amrita. We have for us Salim from Pakistan, who is a business professional with 22 years of experience in business consulting in emerging markets. He's worked with a number of multinational conglomerates in strategy, execution, marketing and communication, and business technology implementation. He successfully set up an operator of the tea business consulting and research firm and he's a consulting and he's currently serving as the general manager at the Mood Hercules Group, and he's also known for his fashion and driving change and initiating projects and strategies that implement that are looking at implementing from a technological level management change there was and also bringing about corporate branding executions. We have Sarah Morris, who's the director of New America's Open Technology Institute, where she leads OTI Strategic Planning, Fundraising and Management. Prior to her role as director, she's also led the program's efforts on a broad portfolio of issues within broadband access and adoption, something that we're going to talk about a lot here. Online consumer protection and preserving the open internet. She's also a regular contributor to the hill and frequently writes for a variety of other national outlets. Prior to joining New America, Morris was also a fellow with the public interest firm Media Access Project, where she assisted with research and drafting of FCC comments on a wide range of key communication issues. And with that, we're going to start with the opening remarks from our panelists. So, Sarah, over to you. Thank you, Rachie, for that wonderful introduction and I'm thrilled to be on this panel with such an esteemed set of panelists I'm already excited for the discussion based on just the conversations we had in the lead up to to the session. I'm Sarah Morris. I run the Open Technology Institute, which is a program within the broader New America umbrella. OTI focuses on research analysis and advocacy on a variety of tech policy topics. Our aim is to ensure that all communities have equitable access to technology and that they're able to benefit from that technology, rather than be harmed by it. So, our issues span, many of the issues that Rashi mentioned in her intro of her intro of me, everything from broadband access and adoption to government surveillance to encryption, data privacy, content moderation and AI decision making algorithmic decision making, and net neutrality and other consumer protection issues online. So I'm thrilled. Broadband access and adoption is an issue I've worked on throughout my entire tenure, 10 year tenure at OTI. And I'm, I'm, as we'll discuss I'm I'm excited for the opportunity to think about this in the, at a time when there's so much attention to the issue. There's numerous ways that you can approach the question of digital equity, even just thinking about this from the United States, from a United States perspective, to help sort of ground our conversation a bit. I'll start start by providing an overview of some findings from our research project that we've completed over various years, but the most recent iteration we released last summer it's called the cost of connectivity. It's research that compares internet access in on data on 760 internet plans across 28 cities in the United States and around the world. One goal of the project was to see how the United States compared in terms of cost and speeds to countries to other countries and cities, but also to provide a snapshot of connectivity in the United States many over 150 plans I believe were US based plans. And part of that as we'll talk about later is to fill in a gap of data that we're missing from the federal government about pricing information. And our findings were, were really, really telling. Our top finding was basically just that we find substantial evidence of an affordability crisis in the United States. Internet access is simply too expensive. This is one for highest average monthly price when compared to cities in Europe and Asia, the average price for internet service in the United States is 68 according to our research is $68 and 38 cents. It's simply unaffordable for millions of people who either lack access or have access that is not sufficient to do the myriad things that are required in this digitally dependent society. And the other thing I'll note about cost in the United States which differs at least to degree if not in, in, in concept more generally to, to other, other cities is that that that price of $68 and 38 cents a month is an incomplete picture modem fees can add up to 75% to a monthly bill, 75% on average show monthly bill in the United States compared to just a 30% addition abroad. In addition, many US plans use promotional rates, and that $68 and 38 cents average price doesn't is based on the promotional that the immediately advertised price and so when that promotional rate expires. The, the price per service per month can will increase on average by $22 and 25 cents a month, which is pretty dramatic. And but finally we see one bright spot in the research and that's that municipal networks offer some of the best value in the United States. There's a little bit more when we think about solutions and the way that we, the models that we use to try to solve the connectivity and affordability crisis. But there were there were sort of three buckets of beyond those takeaways three three primary areas of focus when we think about where we go from here or how we define the problem. affordability transparency and competition. I've already talked about the affordability component, but also there's this dramatic transparency problem. Internet users in the United States and often and in other locations as well, simply don't have a good understanding of how much internet service actually costs so it's very difficult to make a an informed decision when it comes to subscribing to various platforms. And so we've advocated for a broadband nutrition label that essentially provides all of the relevant information about quality of service costs, including any policies around overage fees any data caps etc. As a consumer as an as an internet user facing tool to assess the, the, the actual thing that's being that's being offered in the market. We also urge the FCC to collect better data on pricing so that organizations like the Open Technology Institute don't have to bear that full burden of doing, of doing the research. So that's affordability transparency and competition as I mentioned, community networks municipal networks can provide incredible competitive benefits and in areas where they operate serving to drive down costs and improve services, where there are insufficient competition and connectivity already. And so we'll talk about this, this potential solutions and how they play out in the context of a policy, as we go through the conversation but for now I will stop there. Thanks. Thanks. And now I'll move to for us and for us is going to cover one of the most important core elements of digital access which is infrastructure. Over to you for us. Thank you, Rashi and Sarah that that was a great explanation or detail about what you do so definitely not as exciting as what you're doing but I come here representing a group of dreamers into words and I bring today I bring a dream. But before I share the dream let me just set the stage a little bit and coming from Pakistan, a country in South Asia, where there's an opportunity to connect the next billion Internet users. Let me set some statistics about Pakistan itself. There's 84.2% of tele density. And 4G penetration is at about 44%. Broadband stands at 45%. And now being a part of an organization of dreamers and doers. We end up thinking systems and we end up wanting to design for humans. So, and somewhere the math doesn't add up because, you know, some component is needs needs a little more attention. And why do we say that, because out of a in a country with where there are 220 million people. There's only 1 million freelancers that that are registered and they're about half a million estimates and individuals that are part of the digital economy. So, and so I'm going to repeat that this region has the opportunity to connect the next billion people. And it is vastly different from the unconnected population of the world the average is about 40% of the work is not connected to a data network. So, if we were to talk about digital digital exclusion, or inclusion so to speak, it happens by giving access to infrastructure data connectivity and personal technology. And there's no secret that for developing countries, mobile broadband is directly proportional to high macro and microeconomic benefits. So, and then since cities in most developing countries enjoy a decent connection, I'm going to, I bring a dream for the rural population. And the dream is, imagine there's a remote village up in the hills that has barely 2000 people and imagine how it would be if they were on the network, had access to data, had power to to to electrify a small school, had the enough ability to not only connect to the network, but buy and sell connect with other people buy and sell, and also learn and teach. And this dream is, I think what what of recent has started really, really resonating with me. So, and the group that I belong to started their, you know, their journey in this in their humble effort to set up a tower sharing business, a tower sharing where you have in areas where it doesn't make sense for one mobile network operator to set up a tower and then make it feasible for them. This entity within our group sets up towers and puts up, you know, antenna for multiple mobile network operators, and it's some suddenly starts making financial sense for not only us but of course for the mobile network operator. But but the beneficiary of that commercial thought process is the person who has not been on the network so far. So, and our spirit has been very simple, we make things first available then affordable and then sustainable. And with that, I can, I can say for sure that that we wouldn't have been able to do this without partners, and partnerships are what are going to make this happen. So, and, and, you know, the Professor Schraus is clear stakeholder capitalism says designed for all of your stakeholders, not just your shareholders. And it's not just about return it's about return to society it's about return to shareholders it's about return to employees it's it's it's a plethora of people. And interestingly, a little while ago in an event I was attending a tech mind as Chandraprakash, the Ronnie also mentioned that public private partnership is what is going to make all of these things happen. But I'm here to like just leave this for everybody to, you know, look, look it up there's something called the Edison Alliance, and it intends to prove that partnerships are what are going to connect the next billion people. And, and, and I think there's a great model out there to the sustainable markets initiative. And there's a charter and they're called Terra Carter, and they propose that public private and philanthropic partnerships are what are going to solve the most pressing problems of our time. So, with that, I need the floor. Thank you so much for listening to me and I hope my dream has been conveyed our dream actually. So, thank you. Thank you so much Amrita for that discussion. We now move on to Amrita but before that, I also wanted to tell the audience that you are allowed to ask any questions. And please feel, we will address them towards a little bit towards the end. So if you have any questions, and also feel free to share any resources that you think are interesting and we'd love to see the chat being as animated and as as discussion is at the moment. So now we move on. Amrita and Amrita is going to talk a little bit about her journey in the policy space, like from starting with cyber cafes to what the landscape is now. Over to you Amrita. Thank you Rashi, am I audible because I was having some connectivity issue. Is it okay? It's okay. Okay, thank you. So, I'll bring in the Indian perspective and what we at CCAOI have been doing. If you look at India, we are very interestingly placed. We are the second largest in, we have the second largest internet user population, which is around 767 million broadband users as per the regulators December end report, the However, we have more than 60% people yet to be connected online. We have a huge digital divide. And if you look at what the pandemic has brought in is our reliance on internet. For shopping, health, education, getting the basic government services, etc. Everything has gone online. However, the pandemic has also highlighted that, you know, the people who have internet, the way they have benefited and the people who have not. People have been pushed further back. A study by Oxfam says that 80% of the students have not been able to attend their classes because of lack of internet during the pandemic, and many of them may not be able to come back to schools. So that is the start reality we have. And obviously we have a huge gender divide. While, you know, the government is having a lot of regulatory mechanisms, policies to do it, telecom players are also working. And interestingly, India has the lowest telecom rates, even the internet rates, but still in some places, it is expensive. It is not, you know, the accessibility is an issue simultaneously how people will use what they would be using the demand part is also a challenge. And again, with that is mindset as in, you know, we have a patriarchal society so many places women having a mobile or an internet is something like the families losing control in certain societies that's what we have seen. So these are certain challenges we have, and there are opportunities there are women who have used the internet, and, you know, they have actually benefited their entire families have benefited. We are recently doing a study for for AI, where we are looking at the cost of exclusion and they have had some wonderful stories of how women have actually benefited, you know, even from the remote areas. So we have CC, we do a lot of work. We are involved in the access issue. We are always a proponent that access should be provided to people be it shared access because not everyone are digitally literate, they may not have the necessary infrastructure or skills. So we have access to public health cyber cafes, etc. is something we advocated 12 years back. We also believe in having internet in the local languages with the national internet exchange of India we trained about 2.5 million people on point to 5 million people on digital literacy languages. We've been doing a lot of research on various aspects to build capacity at different levels we have a monthly digital newsletter which we come up to share information about the various issues which are going. We had stakeholder discussion involved people to come and discuss on the public policies which are being discussed via privacy via security via data protection because even if you are using the internet these things are important. We are doing some work on training senior citizens on safe literacy, because you know they have the pandemic has pushed them into the internet, but they really don't know how to protect themselves, as well as look at big news misinformation, etc. So we're doing a lot of work, but what I have seen in my 15 years of experience on in this skill is it is not something which one stakeholder can do themselves. If we want internet to be the same for everyone. We need to empower people and all stakeholders in the government business civil society have to work together and only then can we achieve some level of you know what we are aiming at the universal access. So actually that's my initial comments I'm happy to comment on any of your questions. Thanks. Thanks. Just some food for thought for the audience. We have a few questions for you and meant to meet us. So we have around three to four questions and we wanted you to answer it. I'm going to share it on the screen at the moment. So you need to go to meant to meet up.com met he dot com and use the code double six to eight eight to seven two. The first question is what do you think the term digital rights means, and you have one minute, the 39 attendees have one minute to answer that. Maybe I could be a little clearer. So we're trying to understand what do you think about the term digital rights and you think it should be equated with human rights, because we've seen most of our essential services especially during the pandemic that require the use of digital services and perhaps my friends and my neighbors in India and Pakistan would agree that we used to talk about roti kappa kappa and McCann but now it's roti kappa McCann and data. So the, you know, how how essential has it been for you so yeah that's see knowing your legal rights human right proprietary access. Does anyone think that digital rights or the internet should also be seen as a public source. Perhaps. Okay, we'll move on to the next question. So who do you think should be responsible for educating citizens about their digital rights. Is it government is a tech companies citizens themselves. It's free to answer that. Yeah, when Omar Omar says that we have a charter of human rights and principles of the internet, the internet, internet rights and principles coalition at Omar please feel free to share those resources on chat. People get us. We do have a combination of all of them or people say government or people say tech companies nobody saying citizens themselves. So are we trying to derive the fact that citizens can't take matters in their own hands. We do basically. We move on to the next question, which will be interesting. What are the initiatives that you've come across in your region that promote digital access inclusion. You could mention the links on the chat and responses, and maybe if the panelists want to also chime in and but then yeah we're going to we're going to talk about this in detail and trying to understand what our audience feels about these questions. I work in tech so understand one lap top a child. That's something that is also echoed by the affordable alliance that I was talking about triple helix joint education for your traffic. Community networks, digital literacy from new to NGOs. Let's get some, some more responses for this. Okay, do we move on to the next question. What are the main obstacles and barriers faced by women and girls to access digital technologies and participate in digitalize. Okay, social norms. Privacy violations that's good one lack of literacy also good one most of the devices aren't necessarily designed for keeping women and girls in mind the educational opportunities. Last minute shows yes, a lot of them aren't confident enough, and they also aren't comfortable learning devices for the work that they want to do over studying. Okay, patriarchy wins here is the top answer. Can we move on to the next question, and this is our final question. What are some possible solutions for enhanced digital inclusion. By litigation you mean stronger litigation stronger. I can say at least from India it's better implementation of the laws. Stronger on regulation advocacy welcoming safe space. Okay, all right. Are we going to move on. Just another reminder for the audience that please feel free to post your questions, we would be taking them. This discussion is in the next 10 or 15 minutes. So now I'd like to jump back on the panelists and maybe in stuff for us. You were talking about how private entities and governments need to come together to solve this and might also seem as a very ambitious plan because you'll have different targets will have different motivations. How do you, how do you see that. How do you see that coming together and what are the examples, if you have any successful private and public partnerships that could help us with this. Sure. Thanks. Thanks for the question Rashi I. There are many, many examples of public private partnership being successful. The proposal over here is a little different. What I'm suggesting is that private sector brings its agility and the ability to do things. While public sector brings its blanket approach to populations. Once they define what is required or best for for their their populace and philanthropy actually bridges a gap that is a need unmet. So, and in order to reframe the problem statement. We all need to come together and figure out what exactly is that we're trying to do with I mean the the problem is, is, is, you know, don't give a man some fish, teach them how to fish. So, in order for us to to come together, we need to be able to create a system through which value creation happens, and philanthropy would be in an important partner to bring into the public private sector. So, how does that happen and I'm going to quickly quickly explain this, for example, if an area for connectivity doesn't make sense for the private sector, and the public and government doesn't think doesn't doesn't have an arm for investment, then philanthropy can always bridge the gap because the arbitrage for quality of life improving is is you can measure that. So, thank you. So, we also have a question on the top where, how do you think governments in India, state governments or the central governments are enabling environments that allow us to achieve digital access. Are there any programs are there any schemes we've also seen that during the pandemic, we've also been heavily reliant on e-commerce we've also also seen a rise in digital payments. How, how have you, what are your thoughts on that. Is my audio better now, Rashi, than earlier. It's a lot better. It's a lot better. Right. And maybe it goes weaker, you could also switch off your camera, so that we could hear you. But it's absolutely okay. So, there are various initiatives of the government in India to connect people because the government has a plan to connect all Indians, for example, one would be building the infrastructure, like the fiber optic network to take it to about 0.25 million villages, which we call as gram panchayats. Similarly, this is done in public private partnership using the universal access USG funds. Then there is also something called the common service centers. The rural areas managed by young entrepreneurs to provide the digital is not everyone has devices or are. Similarly, we have just recently the government has announced something called the PM Vani, which is to actually provide private Wi-Fi or public Wi-Fi networks across the country. There are similarly various initiatives there are digital literacy courses, etc, which the government has initiated, which is good but there is more to be done and it is, as I mentioned earlier it is just not the government who has to do so. During the pandemic we definitely saw the rise of use of, you know, the online medium for everything, even a shopkeeper for today, or even a vegetable seller is now using WhatsApp, or using payment modes. That is helping their business, you know, economic strata understand the benefits they get by using the digital medium, they start using it. It is not only affordability access, it is affordable in India, but when a person sees value in using that in their life, they will definitely see. Thanks Amrita. No, but you actually brought a pretty important point there when you said that digital inclusion, especially if you're looking at scaling and scalability, the government does have a much larger bandwidth for that. But you know, digital literacy right now, given how the internet has penetrated into our lives and it affects us from a social level and it can also hamper us economically. It can't be just a one-off course, right? It has to be something more holistic, something more consistent. And maybe Sarah if you could also point in as to what are the efforts that you all have made, what are the policy recommendations you have come in and does net utility really help in this situation of providing accessibility and how do you think you can bridge the divide where there are certain aspects of the community that gets marginalized in this fourth industrial revolution. Sure, thanks Rashi. I'll take with the first question, following up on the digital literacy point. One thing I would add in addition to thinking about digital literacy as a sustained thing, not just a one-off course or interaction, we've also seen the most success with digital literacy efforts that are community driven, that are developed by and for the community or co-created with community partners. And that helps both foster a sense of engagement and ownership of that process, but also builds trust with community members. We often see less successful models that involve the private sector, particularly the internet service providers who the populations that are not yet online are unlikely to trust either because they've had negative interactions with service being cut off or with Bill paying in the past or they just haven't yet found a level of comfort and safety in getting online. And so developing those that digital literacy shared learning at the community level helps foster that trust among members of the community who are already there. That's hard, right? We need partners, we need community organizations in those communities to help support and sustain those programs and those efforts, and we need investment at the federal level and state level in those programs to make, and by the philanthropic sector to make sure that those programs are durable and adaptive. But I think digital literacy is a critical component as we think about, you know, this continuum of availability and access, adoption and affordability and then use and engagement. And, you know, there are, this relates to the question of net neutrality too. So for us, sometimes I think people think that net neutrality is not a question that is directly linked to digital equity, but we really believe that it is that your access to the internet should be unencumbered by the internet service provider who is provisioning the service and that you as the internet user should be able to navigate anywhere you want to go on the internet without fear of being blocked or having certain content that has been prioritized behind the scenes over others. And so the Open Technology Institute has been a staunch advocate for strong net neutrality protections and we're really hopeful that in this administration, this new administration in the United States and the FC, well, and in the new FCC with a shift in leadership that we will see movement back towards the strong net neutrality rules that were implemented in the United States in 2015. But there's a broader question here and with apologies for going a little bit into the US politics and policies, but the same mechanism that made net neutrality possible from a practical standpoint and a legal standpoint was treating the internet as a utility thing. We need to deliver it and oversee it in a way that allows the federal government to intervene directly where there are consumer harms to put in place rules like net neutrality protection. So there's this whole question of authority and what parts of the government are empowered to provide oversight and protect internet users in that context. And what we saw just for a bit of background, we, when the, when the Federal Communications Commission in the United States adopted the net neutrality rules in 2015, they put the internet and the provision of internet service on that strong legal footing, they said, the FCC is empowered in this context they do have authority over internet service providers and can step in when internet, when, when internet users are being harmed. That was true for net neutrality but that also opened up the authority for the FCC to much more clearly intervene on issues of affordability. Access more generally and consume when consumers were or when internet users were not getting the service that they they paid for that they had recourse they had someone an expert agency in the government that they could go to and say we need a better solution. All of that authority was was undone under the most recent federal communications leadership. With the former chairman of the FCC essentially saying, advocating all authority over the internet and leaving internet service in this unregulated bubble, which as we've seen in the context of the pandemic has has meant that the federal government in the United States has been ill equipped to fully step in and ensure that the communities who need connectivity most have it. And so I think, you know, tying that all together I think we need an empowered expert agency to to intervene to be able to intervene and oversee this this market and this industry in a way that puts internet users front and center in the conversation. I think that that makes a lot of sense but moving over for us. What we have realized is that the great park comes to your responsibility and leave, leave each of them or leave the community at their own devices so what given them access and you've given them affordable access. So how do you, how do you help them adopt what are your digital adoption strategies that you have carried out to make sure that the process inclusive, and it's also making sure that they are online for a consistent consistent period of time. You know, for their workforce or for someone who's studying and how does it empower someone on an individual. So, before I answer that question Rashi, if you'd allow me I just have have, you know, a little comment to add to Sarah's comment over here. Actually it's more a question. There is an element of policy and governance there. You spoke about them in in two different layers. So I'd love to understand that a little more where government is the government's job is to create the policy. And the framework through which regulator will implement anything that the private sector and public are doing. Is that what you're proposing. There are some nuances I suppose in the way that federal agencies operate in the United States so there is an enabling statute that is passed by Congress which gives federal agencies the authority to create rules of the Federal Communications Commission promulgate rules create rules of the road for how a specific sector is is is overseen. We've seen this in phone regulation where there are guardrails to ensure that and and subsidy programs that were predicated on the notion that everyone should have universal access to to phone the phone network as it was as it was being built out. We have rules that govern broadcasters and mobile providers. And so this becomes a question of in purely a legal question of what the FCC has been granted the authority to oversee and courts in the United States have upheld that it is proper for the FCC to oversee the internet service provider market and to be clear in this instance I'm talking about internet service providers as a conduit of internet access so not the internet. There's no content on the internet or the internet itself so the provisioning of service to to internet users and and we had a we had that frame that regulatory framework in place from approximately February of 2015 to December of 2017 I believe. Things were successful nothing broke the markets didn't fail. It was a system though a regulatory oversight and intervention where obvious user harms were occurring. So that's the sort of thing I'm proposing not a fully government run internet by any means or even heavy handed regulation of the markets itself but rather targeted oversight with with protection of internet users at the center of those regulatory interventions. Thank you, thank you, I think the internet will often will now be termed as a basic native it hasn't already been done so. So, if policies and regulatory frameworks are designed with that in mind I think everything will hopefully fall in order. I'll ask you to your your question. So, again, the dream that I bring is all about a specific kind of people right but that the journey of making them aware of the potential of being connected to an entire world outside their, you know, mountain village located in the mountains is so exciting. Opportunities for upskilling and reskilling will come from there. Once once they define, you know the kind of jobs or things that they're interested in people are interested in. And of course, all of the great things that I'm with I said the inequalities that come with this access will show up, but it's a learning curve I think we need to, we need to make this connection available to people. And then fight the good fight to make sure that everything is equitable in that. And this as a citizen I can do it as private sector I don't think it falls entirely under my scope but but this citizen happens to be part of the private sector so I bring both my personal personas to that to that good fight. I do think it is important to mention that scaling upskilling and reskilling is is going to be very important in create continuing to create value. And that's not, that's not only true for the unconnected it is also also true for the connected so there's an entire world is going to get the reference points are going to be redefined. And also, it also might contribute towards the digital economy where you have a lot of people from the rural areas who actually migrate to urban settings for promise of a new future but I think this pandemic has made us realize that we can actually work from anywhere, and we can see, I hopefully see a huge rise in remote work and normalizing remote work especially in our desi culture where you have to have a little more trust. But great points there and I'm on our now move on to the audience questions we have four questions so far but please feel free to send them in. I'm going to move on there's a question for under time it says the reliance networks game changing move years back brought prices tremendously down. I did I did river to it on the chat do you want me to speak about it again because the questions which came I have reverted on the chat. You have. Okay, so the question and have you also reverted how do they make digitization more inclusive and who wants to pick up pick on that. I did mention that. So I did revert to second that on it. I think you know policies when they're drafted need to be more nuanced. For example, the people whom you want to connect should be there in the table. For example, you know if you want to connect women in rural areas or even young people, you have to have them in the table. What kind of internet do they want what is it you are looking at. So, it's important to make it inclusive if you want to connect people from from the minorities or even rural populations, you have to have them so that you know what their ones are what their demands are how they want to use it. Based on it, I think, if decision makers have to make policies, or it would be more nuanced. So, the one of the thing is to have every stakeholder on the table when policies are being devised. To make it a bit more inclusive. But we also see in the absence of of robust policies, what do you think that they are the most pressing issues in digital governance and we just saw the recent IT law with amendments and how do you think the pressing issues in digital government can be tackle, especially in terms of when you have informal communities that get into community networks and municipal networks or as I said I said mesh networks and we have we don't we do have an example in Karnataka that's run by an IT Bombay professor called Sabani. So maybe you could highlight a little bit about what are the issues that you've seen in digital governments. So when the concern at times is government has very good intent when policies are being made. However, many attempts the policies do not take the rights of people into consideration. For example, certain rules regulations are made very, they are made with good intent, but they may be stifling too many communities, they may be, you know, the after effects of it may be when you're connecting people as, you know, you need innovative ways in connecting the community by IT Bombay or even some way the internet society has been funding are great ways in which communities can be empowered to have the connectivity and you know to sustain it which it is good, but then you have various ways in which you can do it there are places where you may have to use a satellite there may be places where community networks work, or even the CSCs or the community Wi-Fi which the government is planning if it is done in a particular way would help. But again, when policies are being made, they are made with good intent but I think there should be more communities involved so that the voices can be heard and all issues can be taken into consideration. And that is something which is concerning at times because you know we have a lot of regulations which are coming up they are good, but certain things are missing at some point of time and that's where our concerns especially the rights of people. How you can protect your, the individuals, what would be the government oversight when such rules come in, what would be the liability of the platforms or the others so those are certain things. These cybersecurity part, the privacy part, those are important for example India still doesn't have a privacy law, though it is in the making, but without that how would the, with so many people coming online generating so much of data how can you protect their legitimate interests and rights which they may not be aware of so those are certain questions I think which are very pertinent at this time. I'm going to now move on to an audience question which says hey I find it really helpful if people could share how digital intrusion and exclusion affects mental health and emotional well-being. I can see it's difficult for people, but is there any research or data that provides some specifics as to someone's talking about the overuse of the internet over here. And is there any anyone from the panelists who wants to take that. I did respond to it in the chat. As in there is no, I have not come across data there may be of how exclusion affects mental health. However, there are researchers being done on how internet addiction can help you know affect mental health, but personally I do feel that someone who is online and is not being able to access internet. Does feel excluded does feel stressed. I'm sure that people who are accessing the internet and those who have not accessed internet may have may feel inadequacy of not being able to access the things which someone is, but I have not come across any such research perhaps. We have still not reached a position where we have everyone connected or, you know, for us to get everyone connected in at least a developing country or emerging country like India is a priority first. No, that's true. I'm not sure if we have time to wrap up for it but from what I understand is that we've, we've, we've kind of come to a consensus that we need to be mindful about the different needs and and look at, look at solving the issue the infrastructure issue which is a technical issue from a humanistic lens and we also need to look at the fact that the current policies don't necessarily account for the social and cultural context and you need to include the communities, especially people with disability or women right right from the technical process to the policy process and also with with access also comes a lot of digital skills where we need to understand what are the ways and measures that we can keep ourselves safe right for example we need we there's so much reliance on encryption for digital payments e-commerce, what are the different password management systems that are there, how do we get rid of issues like cyberstalking, cyber theft, online harassment and gender based violence so these are pressing issues which if we build our digital competencies would be solved, we have over a minute and maybe if we have any last comments or final thoughts and then I go on with the world thanks anyone. I just remind that we have to also while designing this there's a remote population in all countries and let's not exclude them from the table as Amrita said let's have them represented also because they have certain priorities for connectivity and it should always be represented on the table so. Go ahead. Yeah, thanks. I think it is if we want to enable internet for any everyone in the same equitable manner. We need to have everyone working together not no single person can do it and internet has to be on I would say I missed this point. We had a lot of shutdowns but it actually doesn't help. There may be different solutions for it internet has to be available for everyone, just like electricity is it is an essential service today. So it should be available affordable and accessible for everyone. I would just emphasize the affordability point I think particularly in our experience in the United States that this is really the dividing line between folks who are able to connect and those who are not and we haven't done enough yet in this country to to from a policy standpoint to really bridge that gap and we're there's there's good steps happening. An emergency broadband benefit was was passed into law last December that will give households qualifying households of $50 a month subsidy which will go a long way. During this pandemic to to get folks connected but that's not the we need a long term solution as well. And so that will be the continued focus of our of our work in the coming months and years. Yeah, actually, unfortunately this brings us to the end of the year. I like to thank all the panelists for such a lovely conversation. And this obviously wouldn't have happened without the partnership that we have with future tense in the America. Thank you so much for hosting the event. Also, a final reminder that we'd love for you to take the double slap survey if you want your suggestions to be incorporated because we would be sharing the report at the annual meeting happening this August hopefully in person in Singapore. And yeah, thank you all and also like to thank our supporting partners DC and network which is an international network of experts who work on digital communication issues and policies across Africa, Asia and Europe. I'd also like to thank that with capital. And with that, we come to an end my friends. Thank you so much and we should also be sure RSVP for next week's future tense event on how will we learn in the future. Thank you so much, and it's been a pleasure moderating the session. Thank you Rashi and everyone for having us.