Social inequalities, fundamental inequities, and recurring of the digital divide: Insights from India

Highlights

• Highest adult education is an important factor for ICT ownership and use.

• Caste of a household is an important factor for ICT ownership and use.

• Effect of occupation on ownership and use of ICT assets is robust.

• The ICT revolution holds possibility of creating new means of social exclusion.

Abstract

The paper uses a large scale national quantitate dataset to provide a fresh perspective on linkages between the digital divide and social inequalities in India. Commencing from two classical social theoretical perspectives – the Marxian conflict perspective and the Weberian cultural perspective – as starting points, we employed MANCOVA analysis on data of more than forty thousand households. The Marxian perspective reveals how information and communication technologies (ICT) assets come to be owned, and how they are used with the help of specific digital skills by the working class to influence labour markets and intergenerationally transfer class advantage. The Weberian perspective focuses on how ownership and use of ICT assets define an elite lifestyle which excludes others. The analysis is deepened by employing network effects approach. Results from data analysis indicate that the less educated, lower-income group, and lower caste strata are further marginalised as they neither have ICT assets nor the skills to use them. Households whose primary source of income is organised business own and use their ICT assets more than those that depend on agricultural or non-agricultural wage labour. Also, the highest adult education in a household, caste, and the primary source of income of the household differentiate ICT ownership and use. Overall, ICT ownership and usage are significantly different for different socio-economic groups in India. This linkage demonstrates how inequalities are aggravated in the manner of a Matthew Effect. The paper suggests that ICTs may end up amplifying the social inequalities in India.

Introduction

The digital divide is considered as an obstacle in the process of development. It demands a more profound understanding, not merely in terms of access to devices or the internet, but also through appreciating differentials in levels of access and usage of digital services which aggravate the already existing complex social divisions [1]. Following Castells, we recognise that digital divides exist in multiple spheres of economy and society. Besides rural and urban divides, there are social and democratic divides, regional divides, and more interestingly, digital divides in the spheres of gender, command over the English language, professional skills, quality of school education, age group, caste, class, and so on [[2], [3], [4]]. Besides these factors, there exists the large cohort of what Qiu [5] terms as the “information have-less” who possess digital artefacts and may enjoy internet access (and are hence “connected”) but have limited incomes and participation in larger political and economic processes. Technological “trickle downs” are therefore debatable, as the information economy is characterised by uneven geographies, despite ICTs becoming increasingly affordable and offering applications in a variety of domains [6]. Patterns of inequalities mirror wider social patterns of privilege and exclusion, which may disempower ICTs in their potential to reverse these inequities [7]:141) As Halford and Savage [8] argue, once we begin to analyse social inequalities and digital dimensions simultaneously, the scale of the agenda ahead in development policy expands. Therefore, the challenge is to widen our understanding of the ICT issue beyond an oversimplified economic viewpoint, to investigate the roots and mechanisms of exclusion, and employ ICTs for more social inclusion rather than to merely overcome a digital divide [9,10]. This approach is not entirely novel, as there have indeed been noteworthy efforts in expanding the scope of the digital divide (e.g., Ref. [[11], [12], [13], [14], [15]].

Many studies have suggested technology access as a solution for digital inequality (e.g. Ref. [16,17], which have been met with substantial critique (for instance, Ref. [18,19]. Many state-led initiatives (for instance, National Digital Literacy Mission in India) promote improving access to technological artefacts, as they believe access to be the principal issue at hand [16,20]. However, little attention in the academic and policy literature, specifically in India, has been given to the causes and consequences of uneven technological diffusion rooted around social inequalities [21]. Inequitable opportunities (based on income, education, and caste) in developing ICT related skills have been overlooked, as is also about how ICT penetration ends up reinforcing and accelerating gender, race, caste, and occupational inequalities [[22], [23], [24], [25], [26], [27], [28]]. The uneven use and distribution of ICTs may induce new forms of poverty and exclusion, by reproducing existing inequalities and social classes [29]. This could lead also to a Matthew Effect in digital participation in India, with those who “have” expanding their opportunity set while those who “have-not” becoming progressively disempowered and being excluded from the mainstream (and, by extension, the “information have-less” probably stagnating). With digital skills now considered significant, individuals without e-mail or social media accounts are perceived of as “excluded” from social and economic spheres [30]. Despite this, academic enquiry on digital inequality among disadvantaged groups have been biased towards understanding mostly adoption rates [20,31]. We know (for instance from Ref. [16,32] that all individuals do not have similar responses to technology and there is a need for a re-look from other viewpoints.

We proceed from this point, suggesting that there is more to the digital divide than simply access. We undertake an empirical analysis of ICT ownership and use in the context of social inequality in India, and attempt to demonstrate that social inequalities replicate the digital divide. We present ICT access as mirroring social status (in terms of caste ascription), education level, and occupational attainment, drawing from secondary quantitative information and employing statistical analysis, finally interpreting the results through classic political-economy perspectives and network effect theory.

The paper is divided into seven sections. The following section delineates the theoretical frameworks used, moving on to the methodology followed in the study. The fourth section shares the findings emerging from the data analysis, while the fifth section discusses the findings in light of network theory. The sixth section delineates the areas for future work, and the final section concludes the paper.