E-DISPARITY

As we have recently witnessed, the global dependency on technology and especially the Internet has surged manifold. Every sector is relying on the endowments on the web in some capacity or the other. While this development is definitely a good thing in terms of reach and impact, but the ubiquity of the same cannot be taken for granted. The IT revolution is relatively new, and its utility has still not reached a large section of people.

While this might not be true to a great extent for developed nations, yet the developing nations are struggling to widen the reach of the Internet. India saw an onset of a campaign called Digital India, where in the Prime Minister of the country took it upon himself and his cabinet to bolster the use of the Internet. Now, we might not be able to correctly reckon the disparity between the technologically advanced and naive sections of our society, but the divide is apparently immense.

Recently there was a very gut-wrenching report in the newspaper, which stated that a young boy from India had committed suicide as he could not access the online classes which were being recorded by his school. The sheer frustration and helplessness of not being able to get on the Internet prompted this young boy to take his own life. Upon closer introspection, we realize that a deeper dependency on the web without focusing on the extent of its reach is fatal and futile.

Before we start placing a lot of bets on the web world, we must focus on its penetration into all sections of society. If a section is kept aloof from the awards of the Internet, while another section is just becoming more and more capable of consuming the fruits of the web world, we are only creating a very nasty gap in the society.

As we can already witness that a vast majority of people are working from home while an even more massive chunk of people is being laid off. The nature of the job definitely plays a major role in deciding the fate of a person in these testing times. Still, the scope of opportunities immensely varies for people depending upon their accessibility to the Internet.

I firmly believe that the IT sector needs to think about enhancing their reach in order to allow a more extensive section of society to avail the benefits of the web.