IT in India

"Are there feminist ways of using IT and communication technology that can subvert its inherently exploitative message? How can we use the Internet and e-learning technologies to transfer IT know-how to women with limited technological and reading skills while also drawing them into the women's movement? How can we use and influence mainstream television, characterised as it is in India today by a seductive cocktail of consumerism, religion and glamorised oppression?"

These and other questions shape this article, which is based on Kalyani Menon-Sen's panel presentation on globlalised media and information and communication technology (ICT) systems and structures organised by Isis International-Manila during the World Summit on the Information Society in December 2003 in Geneva, Switzerland. The article traces trends in the information technology (IT) revolution in India, including the increasing numbers of women employed in call centres - and highlights their unused college education, abnormal working hours, and - consequently - compromised human interaction and relationships.

Below is an excerpt from the piece, which traces some of these country-specific IT trends. Reference is made here to an India-based women's resource, communication and documentation centre called JAGORI (which means "wake up, woman") that was started by a group of 7 feminists (6 women and 1 man) in 1984. Since its inception, JAGORI has used "a variety of media. We started with songs - a very successful vehicle for mobilisation. We have produced several music cassettes. We have also produced posters, pamphlets, newsletters, booklets, TV spots, video documentaries, as well as community theatre. In the process, we have also honed our skills in making documentation a political activity."

Excerpts from the article follow:

"Today, India is one of the global nodes of the 'IT Revolution' and a large number of well-meaning agencies are frantically trying to bridge the "Digital Divide", or the gap that keeps women from accessing information and information technologies. But for the women JAGORI works with, this is not a new situation - the situation of drowning in information that is of no use to them is a familiar element of their reality. In fact, information is central to the maintenance of the 'natural order' in patriarchal societies. Information and knowledge have always been used as tools of domination and subjugation...

The situation of women in the Information Age is therefore no more than an update of an old story....The most successful experiments - and there is no denying that these are genuinely impressive - are those where Electronic Information Centres have been set up at the village level in some of India's most remote and deprived areas. These centres are often run by young women. Yet, the menu of information that is available for access gives the game away. While it is possible to download weather forecasts and the latest market prices of agricultural commodities, sometimes even the bio-data of prospective brides and grooms (sorted carefully by caste!), there is a notable absence of information on the legal protection available to women facing domestic violence, on inheritance rights, on Constitutional guarantees regarding women's rights, on the nearest certified abortion centre...

The development of technologies that have enabled services to be outsourced to countries where wages are low and labour laws less restrictive has allowed Indian IT companies to build huge empires and claim the credit for an industrial revival. However, once the rosy clouds of huge initial profits have dispersed, it is increasingly obvious that multi-national corporations (MNCs) see Indian IT firms not so much as a source of high-end IT products, but as suppliers of low-end "IT coolies" - cheap and efficient workers who will provide quick-fix solutions to the small nitty-gritty problems that crop up every day in the course of their global operations.

The average IT professional in India is male, a graduate of one of our respected technology schools, and a strong candidate for recruitment by Microsoft or any of the global IT conglomerates. These - the finest IT brains in the world, according to many - spend their time working at about 10 percent of their intellectual capacities but earning salaries equivalent to 300 times the minimum wage and living in gated communities...

At the other end of the spectrum from the IT professional is the worker in the "Business Process Outsourcing" segment of the IT sector. Here, the workers are mainly women who fall into two broad categories with very different profiles..."