Report Title: poverty versus digital divide gap

Course- Research Methodology (MGT 411)

Presented by:-
Md.Tariqul Islam Students of BBA 2nd batch, 4th year 2nd semester
Roll no- 06671622
Session 2006-2007
Section- B
E-mail:-tareq622 @gmail.com
Department of Management Studies

Under the supervision of (Mr.Md.Shahidul Islam Fakir, associate professor, department of Management studies)

Faculty of Business Studies
JAGANNATH UNIVERSITY DHAKA

Submission date- June , 2012

Title of report: digital divide gap vs. poverty. Is there any relation between them?
Table of content

|Serial no |Title |Page no |
|1 |Abstract | |
|2 |Literature review | |
|3 |Background and ICT status of Bangladesh | |
|4 |Executive summary | |
|5 |Main body (Current scenario, Challenge, Recommendation) | |
|6 |Conclusion | |
|7 |Reference | |
|8 |Questionnaire | |

List of tables
|Serial no |Title |Page no |
|1 |Bangladesh at a glance | |
|2 |ICT statistics on world (per 1000 people) | |
Abstract
In the mid-1990s information and communications technology (ICT) boomed, enabling rapid and Worldwide dissemination of information to those with access. Later technologies are modernized day by day. Rapid expansion of technology is also occurred. People became familiar with technology. Governments took various steps to boost technology use in their country. Different organization emerged. But technologies (ICTs) are not equally distributed. This expansion happens largely on developed countries than the developing countries. Developed countries are getting much benefit from the advancement of ICTs. Technology used largely by richer than poorer. That’s created digital divide among them. But needs to be create a bridge over his digital divide gap. This paper reviews the papers on issues related to digital divide that are affecting so
Many citizens in developing countries especially in Bangladesh and the factors that alienate people from enjoying the benefits of ICTs.

Objective of the report
The main objective of this report is fid out the relationship between digital divide gap and poverty and find find out the proper reason behind that and alaso find out the solution toward some specific problem to some person . as also it can help to, • To find out the major reason related to digital divide gap • Find out a solution to make bridge over the digital divide gap • Find out the impact of poverty on gap between developed and developing countries • To draw a conclusion on relationship between poverty and digital divide gap • To help on taking decision to eliminate digital divide gap • To help closing the technology gap would lift people out of poverty.

LITERATURE REVIEW:

The digital divide refers to the gap between those who have access to technology and those who do not. This term came about in the mid-1990s from President Clinton and Vice-President Gore. The digital divide is a term used to describe the discrepancy between people who have access to and the resources to use new information and communication tools such as the computer and internet, and people who do not have the resources and access to the technology. The term also describes the discrepancy between those who have the skills, knowledge and abilities to use the technologies and those who do not have.

The term digital divide refers to the gap between those with regular, effective access to digital and information technology, and those without this access.
The Digital Divide refers to any inequalities between groups, broadly construed, in terms of access to, use of, or knowledge of information and communication technologies (ICT)

The Digital Divide is described as the gap separating those who have computers and Internet access from those who don’t [Young 2002, Dasgupta et. al. 2001].

Access to the technology: the very first reason for Digital Divide in Bangladesh is that the telecommunications infrastructure is deficient. In Bangladesh, the telephone density is only about 0.5%, which is the main reason for insignificant internet connection in the country.
Economic Barriers; The economic condition of the people is one of the vital issue for computer use and internet connectivity. Generally, on average wealthy and educated as well as young, urban and male have the internet access, which appears that economic solvency & education are the major factor during internet diffusion. Most of which are not favorable in Bangladesh.
Literacy Barrier; Bangladesh is facing acute crisis of skilled computer user due to literacy problem. Information in the net is designed in the advance technology, which require adequate knowledge for the user. Moreover, overall less educated community who are not very computer friendly.
Language Barrier; Language problem is another vital issue for the local user of the internet/web. There are very few web sites available in local language i.e. in Bengali. Local people are not very much frequent / efficient in English as language.
Lack of Local & Social Issues in the Net; Contents in the web is not sufficiently enriched with information and services required by the local user. Still, local webs are concentrated with their product & service promotion. Information based web services have not yet available in the net with local information.

Social & Cultural Environment; As male group of the society can avail the web access facility from commercial centers or outside the home but the local women community of Bangladesh has limited access due to some social and cultural environment. Unfortunately, due to family obligation & service, they can not spare sufficient time for using the net.
Problem of Technology Access & Use of Women; The main backward community of our society is the women. They have a very limited access in the internet because of – • Lack of Education • Fear of Technology use • Economic Condition • Lack of English language • Family responsibility • Social aspect for availing internet facilities from outside • Working Environment and Professional Need Assessment

So, The term digital divide refers to the gap between those people with effective access to digital and information technology and those without access to it.I want to find of this report the relationship between poverty and digital divide gap.

Where Poverty is the state of one who lacks a certain amount of material possessions or money.

Poverty is pronounced deprivation in well-being, and comprises many dimensions. It includes low incomes and the inability to acquire the basic goods and services necessary for survival with dignity(World Bank)

poverty means lack of basic capacity to participate effectively in society.(UN)
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Background and ICT status of Bangladesh
Bangladesh is one of the developing countries of the world. It is called developing country because its development are continuously improved. But many people living in this country are below the poverty line .maximum indicator which represent economy of any country is quite below from other developing country.
Bangladesh at a glance;
|Population, mid-year (millions) |148.7 |
|Poverty (% of population below national poverty line)- 32 |32 |
|GNI (Atlas method, US$ billions) |104.7 |
|GNI per capita (Atlas method, US$)- |700 |

The ICT status of Bangladesh is not remarkable without some favorable initiatives by the
Government and by private entrepreneurs. Computer use in Bangladesh started with a
Mainframe computer in 1964. The Internet came in Bangladesh in 1993 and IP connectivity in 1996. In April 2000, the Government withdraws taxes on VSAT after that, the use of Internet scenario of the country has been changing rapidly The Ministry of
Science and Information and Communication Technology approved the national ICT policy in 2002. Meanwhile, the ICT Act 2003, based on the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL), known as the UNCITRAL Model Law on Electronic Commerce.
South East Asia-Middle East-West Europe (SEA-ME-WE-4) is a submarine cable consortium connecting 14 counties at 16 landing stations. Bangladesh joined the consortium and signed a MOU on 4 September 2002 at Bali in Indonesia, and then signed the Construction and Maintenance Agreement in 2004 in Dubai. After four years of joining the consortium, on 21 May 2006, the Prime Minister of Bangladesh inaugurated this submarine cable connecting with Bangladesh. The total length of the cable is 22,000 km (approx.),
Executive summary
A term digital divide gap that describes the division of the world into two camps, those who have access to the Internet and other advanced information technologies and those who don't. The term highlights the issue that those who do not have access to such technology are potentially destined to futures where they will be at an economic disadvantage. This word supported by following;
5The digital divide refers to the gap between those who have access to technology and those who do not. This term came about in the mid-1990s from President Clinton and Vice-President Gore.

The Digital Divide is described as the gap separating those who have computers and Internet access from those who don’t [Young 2002, Dasgupta et. al. 2001]

poverty is one of the condition which reflect a situation to not fulfill their necessary need for being poor..that word also supported by professor Peter Townsend, a leading authority on UK poverty, defines relative poverty as when someone’s “resources are so seriously below those commanded by the average individual or family that they are, in effect, excluded from ordinary living patterns, customs and activities”. (Reporting poverty in the UK p 15)

European Commission definition
:
“People are said to be living in poverty if their income and resources are so inadequate as to preclude them from having a standard of living considered acceptable in the society in which they live. Because of their poverty they may experience multiple disadvantage through unemployment, low income, poor housing, inadequate health care and barriers to lifelong learning, culture, sport and recreation. They are often excluded and marginalised from participating in activities (economic, social and cultural) that are the norm for other people and their access to fundamental rights may be restricted.”( In its Joint Report on Social Inclusion 2004 the EC)

Different people seen this digital divide one of the major effect of poverty because their long term experience suggest that poverty is one of the important factor for digital divide
Bill Gates, the chairman of Microsoft, was one of the speakers at the conference (Gates, 2000). Drawing on his experience with philanthropic work in Asia and Africahe did not see a significant economic opportunity in trying to sell computers to people who are struggling daily just to survive. Gates’s message is consistent with recent statements by international anti-poverty groups such as Oxfam (The Hindu, July 23, 2000)
The digital divide is a term used to describe the discrepancy between people who have access to and the resources to use new information and communication tools such as the computer and internet, and people who do not have the resources and access to the technology. (Emmanuel Onyango) Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania

MAIN BODY:
There are many perspectives on the digital divide with different connotations and focus, some argue that computers, connections and training will solve the problem, while others contend that government action hinders the development and use of ICTs, and unless policies are changed otherwise the digital divide cannot be solved. But many people who overlook at the problem do not understand how the use of ICTs can be relevant to their lives. Underlying social issues like basic poverty also loom large, and some questions whether and how technology can become part of the solution to this critical problems. The Digital Divide is meaningless to those who lack the basic essentials such as adequate nutrition, primary health care, basic education, safe water and sanitary living conditions

It is believed that barriers such as poverty, illiteracy and so on are holding people back from having access to computers and the Internet. Only the wealthy are able to afford the technology, especially the most advanced machines and software. The poor, sometimes are the ones benefiting least from access to computers and Internet technology because of high mainainance cost and training cost

Condition for poverty
First, those living in such grinding poverty need help in many fundamental ways before they will have any use for computers or cell phones. This help must begin with devising ways for the people to earn a living wage, based on work that is suited for them and their local communities—which are often small, agrarian communities

Second, the poor obviously cannot afford to buy any high technology products now
And will not be able to do so anytime soon. This will have to wait until they become Middle-class consumers, which is a long way from where they are today.

Finally, even if solutions based on high technology were somehow shown to be
Effective, they are likely to be expensive and heavy on resource consumption

The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in its Human Development Report for 2001 has cited evidence showing that the current technology divide is consistently following the income divide all over the world.

/
/For this above challenge underdeveloped countries face problem to bridge digital divide .that’s why technology use vary from rich to poor countries. To support this comment provide table which shows variation in technology use

///Sample ICT statistics on world (per 1000 people)
|Country |Population(million) |Radios |Household tvs |Phones |PC |Internet user|
| | | | |fixed |mobiles | | |
|Denmark |5.4 |1400 |9.8 |643 |956 |656 |696 |
|Sweden |9 |2811 |9.4 |767 |1034 |763 |756 |
|France |60.4 |950 |9.5 |561 |738 |487 |414 |
| Germany |82.5 |570 |9.4 |661 |864 |561 |500 |
|UK |59.9 |1445 |9.9 |563 |1021 |599 |628 |
|USA |293.7 |2109 |9.7 |606 |617 |749 |630 |
|Australia |20.1 |1996 |9.6 |541 |818 |682 |646 |
|New zealand |4.1 |991 |9.8 |443 |745 |474 |788 |
|Bangladesh |139.2 |49 |2.9 |6 |31 |12 |2 |
|India |1079.7 |120 |3.7 |41 |44 |12 |32 |
|Srilanka |19.4 |215 |3.2 |51 |114 |27 |14 |
|Pakistan |151.1 |105 |3.9 |30 |33 |5 |13 |
|Japan |127.8 |956 |9.9 |460 |716 |542 |587 |
|Malaysia |24.9 |420 |9.8 |179 |587 |197 |397 |

Source: *World development indicators
This table support that Population residing in developing countries or in low-income countries may be unable to gain access.which may not support to bridge digital divide gap

So Statistics shows that, computer ownership and internet access, use of cellular phones as new media facilities, are lower among certain groups of the population primarily due to poverty. here I provided some causes for that

Restriction for poorer people
Non-access to technology deepens the differences between the rich and the poor. We examine from our investigation that the following reasons are restricted poorer people to having ICT facilities. • Unequal opportunities to trade and engage in E-commerce.

• Unequal access to communication and information.

• Solving this problem does not guarantee the reduction or elimination of poverty.

• This concept may portray minority groups as technophobic charity cases lacking the desire to adopt new technologies on their own.

• poorer people are having Lower opportunity to makes banking transaction

• poorer people having lower opportunity of education

ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF THE
DIGITAL DIVIDE IN POVERTY REGION • /The wealthy are the ones that can afford to access technology and software, especially the most advanced in these areas.

• "The poor are unable to purchase technology because of the high cost.

• "The poor are also restricted by a lack of skill in terms of computer usage and in many cases are illiterate.

• "Poor countries do not benefit from Internet access at school for school children or via Cyber cafes for the general public.

• "The Digital Divide is seen as a reflection of the Economic Divide around the world.

• "Minority groups are the ones suffering the most in developing countries from this lack of access to technology.

In case of country
People living in developed countries has the best access to the fastest computers, best telephone services, competitive Internet Service Providers, and a wealth of content and training relevant to their lives. On the other hand, people living in developing countries have limited access or no access at all to these technologies. The group “have nots” also don’t have the more ability to use ICTs and even they don’t know that technology can make their life easier. The real gap between these two groups of people is called the “digital divide”.
The digital divide is indeed one of many that separate rich countries from poor. It is one, however, that we cannot ignore. The technological genie is out of the box and will not allow itself to be put back into that box. The argument that poor countries should concentrate on bridging the other divides, like health, education and infrastructure

Challenge/cost relating to technology in case of countries • For maintaining telecommunication cost cheaper.

• for Training to large number of youth for technological efficiency

• for maintaining economy of balance in import technical parts

• forming institution for advancing technology

• providing penetration to domestic technology related organization

• providing support to maintaining domestic organization

• providing support by investing huge number of money which is not possible for private organization

• investing on making technology easier, faster , cheaper etc

• providing legal support to maintaining or advancing

• Inadequate ICT infrastructure support as compared to other countries in this region • Inadequate budget provision for establishment, maintenance and expansion of computer networks in the country • Reliable power supply is a major hindrance to develop telecom infrastructure in the rural areas

• centralized policy to progress of ICT in the country

RECOMMENDATION
Various studies shows that only ICTs are tools that will help leapfrog the development divide and accelerate efforts to combat poverty, hunger, disease and illiteracy in a bid to meet the Millennium Development Goals. for that reason its need to be take following steps by government. Because it’s not a luxury at all it must help to change living condition of people of certain country

• Solutions must be based on an understanding of local needs and conditions.

• Make sure that “ Opportunity Cost ” will be reduced through using the internet service

• The disadvantaged individuals in communities demonstrates the potential of the IT to serve as a tool of social change,

• Govt. to go for infrastructure development

• NGO’s working in the rural area to be integrated with the program

• Bring education and promote organizing efforts to attain technological development by to level authority of any country

• Strategic Integration for industry partnership between Gov. initiatives and other organizations to foster the steps to minimize the digital divide gap and creating environment for the use of Technology.

• They can help all societies to solve long standing economic and social problems,

• Needs to be provided income opportunity in technology use and makes familiar to them the existing one

• Provide adequate assurance to people that income in internet is safe and secure

• provide legal support such as ICT POLICY in internet income

• Reduce extra charges, if it possible needs to be eliminated tax, import duty etc.

• Provide subsidy or other allowance to people to having IT facilities.\

• Make digital infrastructure which is more easier to use and required less skill

• Access to information technology cannot be useful unless basic needs such as health and education are met. So government can focus on provide basic health and education services.

Conclusion; In this paper I want to uncovered several expected and some unexpected fact. That confirms the importance of per capita income in reducing the gap in computer and Internet use. The argument that poor countries should concentrate on bridging the other divides, like health, education and infrastructure and forget about the digital divide smacks of colonial baggage. All these issues need to be addressed while making use of modern technology.We do not wish to imply that all our results are new or unexpected. Indeed, some are quite consistent with the extant literature on the causes of the digital divide. as also we have identified several results that have informed our understanding of the various determinants of the digital divide between rich and poor.

References

http://www.digitaldividenetwork.org/content/stories/index.cfm

Geer, S. (2001). Pocket Internet (Third Edition). The Economist in Association with Profile Books Ltd

Wikipedia the electronic encyclopedia.

“The Determinants of the Global Digital Divide:ACross-Country Analysis of Computer and Internet Penetration,” Oxford Economic Papers 59 (2007):16–44.

Chinn, Menzie D. and Robert W. Fairlie, “ICT Use in the Developing World: An Analysis of Differences in Computer and Internet Penetration,” NBER working paper James, Jeffrey (2001) “Low cost computing and related ways of overcoming the global
Digital Divide” Journal of Information Science, Volume 27, Issue 6, November,
p.385

Md Shahid Uddin Akbar .m BD.com,”Turn the Local Women in to Digital Work Force. A Project of Unicorn Systems

Islam, Anwarul & Rahman, Md. Anisur. (2006). Growth and development of
Information technologies in Bangladesh. The Electronic Library. 24(2):135-465

World Bank. World development indicators . Washington, DC: WorldBank.

Bridges.org. Spanning the digital divide: understanding and tackling the issues. www.bridges.org/spanning Sample questionnaire on
Finding Digital divide gap of Bangladesh
Name: ……………………………………………………… Age: …………………………. Sex: 1. Male 2. Female Occupation: ……………………………………………

Question 1. Income status of respondent. 1. 5000-10000 2.10000-15000

2. 15000-Above

Question 2. Are you using computer or mobile internet for information?
1` Yes 2. No

2A If yes .why you have?

1. Income generating 2. For learning

3 For entertain 4. Extra other

2B If no, whats the reason behind it?

1. Poverty 2. Not important

3. Not have knowledge 4. Poor facilities 5. etc 1.

Question 3. What’s your opinion about internet service you currently get from ISPs,is it sutable to your income? 1. Excellently 2. Good 4. Fair 5. Poor

/Question 4. What do you think about the Poverty reduction to bridge digital divide gap? 1. Extremely important 2. Very important 3. Somewhat important 4. Not important

Question 5. What is your opinion about present government activities about technology? …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Question 6. What is the relationship between poverty and reducing digital divide gap? 1. Positive 2. Negative

Question 7. Government initiatives and PPP can reduce digital gap quickly are you support it? 1. Strongly disagree 2. Disagree 3. Neither agree nor disagree 4. Agree 5. Strongly agree

Thank you
ital