Sathfilms

I was speaking to a friend of mine about my communication revolutions essay and the divides that seem to be present in and between societies. Some of the stuff that we’ve had to read about “communication revolutions” has been suggesting that although we might be surrounded by changes and amazing technology, with frequent technological advancements, there are so many people who don’t even get a chance to use a computer, let alone browse the internet or know how to in the first place. The list goes on at the inequality and inequity present in societies, and there are many factors why technology isn’t just a magical liberating technology that will free people and take away problems whilst creating true democratic states or a “global brotherhood.” That’s not the point though. A couple of people have said to me that the communication revolution is true and pervaisive. There are definite changes going on and it’s changing how we do things, but I’m not convinced it’s chcanging the “who” and the “why” in societies.

So, my friend was telling me that India is a good example of the communication revolution. In many ways, India does owes a lot of it’s economic growth to technology. Some claim that this recent boom has created a middle class in India and increasing equality and so on. Although the wealthy people and those in power would be gaining the most, a stronger economy surely would help others too, yet perhaps to some lesser degree – so in that sense the technology is making a big difference and there is a technological revolution of sorts. This argument can continue in many ways, and it’d be interesting to see how the social relations have changed in the country, and to see who holds power now compared to twenty years ago, and so on. And that’s perhaps for another day, but some of the people I spoke to were convinced that a massive percentage of Indians are on the internet because inequity is decreasing and the middle class is booming. The figure I got out of these friends was that they thought around thirty percent have access to the internet in India. A little while back, I was driven from Chennai (Madras) to Bengaluru (Bangalore) and we drove through a bunch of little villages looked like they lacked electricity let alone computers and the internet. There were so many little villages with a lot of people running around, and I remember noticing that many people seemed to just have the bare essentials. I keep saying “seemed” but this was what was popping up in my head when my friend was talking about the communication revolution in India.

So, I did a bit of research, but, I’m not entirely sure how accurate all the statistics are, nonetheless, all the stuff I found showed similar results. The statistics say that about four percent of Indians have internet connections, and the largest figure I found stood out, and was about eleven percent.

Here are some sites with user estimates:

UNICEF (stats are a tad old)

Internet & Mobile Association of India

Interet World Stats

Neoncarrot: India Travelog