Beyond Access as Inclusion

One of the most attractive characteristics of theInternet – and perhaps also one of the most debated ones – is itsempowering, democratising potential. In expositions in favour ofaccess to the Internet for all, this potential certainly often playsa central role: as the Internet can help us to make our societiesmore open, more inclusive, and more democratic, everybody should beable to reap the fruits of this technology, it is argued. In otherwords, in debates on access to the Internet, most of us take as ourstarting point the desirability of such access, for the abovereasons. But how justified is such a stance? Is an Internet-induceddemocratic transformation of our societies what is actually happeningon the ground?

I would like to move away, in this blog post, fromthe more traditional approaches to the issue of access, where debatesmostly veer towards issues of infrastructure (spectrum, backbones,last mile connectivity, …) or, under the banner of “diversity”,towards the needs of specific, disadvantaged communities (especiallylinguistic minorities and the disabled). To remind us more sharply ofthe issues at stake and of the wide range of human rights that needour active attention to make our dreams a reality, I would like totake a step back and to ask two fundamental questions regardingaccess: why might access be important? And what do we actually haveaccess to?

Let me start, then, by exploring the first question:why, actually, is Internet access important? In his canonical work onthe information age, and especially in the first volume on the riseof the network society, Manuel Castells (2000) has perhaps providedthe most elaborate and erudite description of the ways in which newtechnologies are restructuring our societies and our lives. We areall all too familiar with the many and deep-seated ways in which theInternet changes the manner in which we learn, play, court, pay, dobusiness, maintain relationships, dream, campaign. And yet, the exactnature of the divide created by the unequal distribution of technicalinfrastructure and access, despite being so very real, receivesrelatively little attention: this divide is not simply one ofopportunities, it is crucially one of power. If in traditionalMarxist analysis the problem was that the oppressed did not haveaccess to the means of production, today, one could well argue, theproblem is that they do not have access to the means of communicationand information.

Indeed, the Internet is not something that is simplyhappening to us: there are people who are responsible for these newevolutions. And so it becomes important to ask: who is shaping theInternet? Who is creating this new world? Let us, by way of example,consider some figures relating to Internet use in India. So oftenhailed as the emerging IT superpower of the world, there are, by theend of 2009, according to official government figures, in thiscountry of 1 billion 250 million people slightly more than 15 millionInternet connections. Of these, only slightly more than half, oralmost 8 million, are broadband connections – the rest are stilldial-up ones (TRAI 2010). The number of Internet users is of coursehigher – one survey estimates that there are between 52 million and71 million Internet users in urban areas, where the bulk of users isstill located (IAMAI 2010). But while this is a considerable number,it remains a fraction of the population in a country so big. Whatthese figures put in stark relief, then, is that the poor andmarginalised are not so much excluded from the information society(in fact, many have to bear the consequences of new evolutions madepossible by it in rather excruciating fashion), but rather, that theyare fundamentally excluded from shaping the critical ways in whichour societies are being transformed.

To have at least the possibility to access theInternet is, then, of central significance in this context for thepossibility of participation it signals in the restructuring of oursocieties at the community, national and global level, and this intwo ways: in the creation of visions of where our societies should begoing, and in the actual shaping of the architecture of our societiesin the information age.

If we agree that access attains great significancein this sense, then a second question poses itself, and that is: inpractice, what exactly are we getting access to? This query should beof concern to all of us. With the increasing corporatisation of theInternet and the seemingly growing urges of governments on allcontinents to survey and control their citizens, new challenges arethrown up of how to nurture the growth of open, inclusive, democraticsocieties, that all of us are required to take an interest in.

Yet it is in the case of poor and marginalisedpeople that the challenges are most pronounced. Efforts toinclude them in the information society are disproportionatelylegitimised on the basis of the contribution these can make toimproving their livelihoods. Initiatives, often using mobiletechnology, that allow farmers to get immediate information about themarket prices of the produce they are intending to sell, are perhapsthe most well-known and oft-cited examples in this category. Otherefforts aim to improve the information flow from the government tocitizens: India has set up an ambitious network of Common ServiceCentres, for example, that aim to greatly facilitate the access ofcitizens to particular government services, such as obtaining birthor caste certificates – and going by first indications, this alsoseems to be succeeding in practice. Only rarely, however, doinitiatives to “include” the poor in the information societyaddress them as holistic beings who do not only have economic lives,but political, emotional, creative and intellectual existences aswell. This is not to say that economic issues are not ofimportance. But by highlighting only this aspect of poor peopleslives, we promote a highly impoverished understanding of theirexistences.

The focus on a limited aspect of the poors identity- important as that aspect may be – has a function, however: it makesit possible to hide from view the extremely restrictive terms onwhich poor people are currently being integrated into the informationsociety. Even initiatives such as the Common Service Centres are infact based on a public-private-partnership model that explicitly aimsto “align [..] social and commercial goals” (DIT 2006: 1), and ineffect subordinates government service design to the requirements ofthe CSC business model (Singh 2008). The point is not simply that weneed strong privacy and data protection policies in such a context –although we clearly do. There is a larger issue here, which is thatefforts to include the poor in the information society, in thepresent circumstances, really seem to simply integrate them moreclosely into a capitalist system over which they have little control,or to submit them to ever greater levels of government and corporatesurveillance. Their own capacity to give shape to the system in whichthey are “included”, despite the oft-heralded capacities of theInternet to allow greater democratic participation and to turneverybody into a producer and distributor, as well as a consumer,remains extremely limited.

Such tendencies have not gone unnoticed. Forexample, unlike in many other parts of the world, social movements inIndia fighting against dams, special economic zones or miningoperations in forest areas – all initiatives that lead to large-scaledisplacement – have not embraced technology as enthusiastically asone might have expected. There are various reasons for this. WithinIndian nationalism, there have always been strands deeply critical oftechnology, with Gandhi perhaps their most illustrious proponent. Butfor many activists, technology often also already comes with anideological baggage: an application such as Twitter, for example, inso many of its aspects is clearly manufactured by others, for others,drawing on value sets that activists often in many ways are reluctantto embrace. And such connotations only gain greater validity becauseof the intimate connections that exist in India between the IT boomand neoliberalism: technology has great responsibility for many ofthe trends and practices these activists are fighting against. Whilethe Internet might have made possible many new publics, mostmovements do not – as movements – recognise these publics astheir own (Kovacs, forthcoming).

To some extent, these are of course questions of theextent of access that people are granted. But they also raise theimportant issue of the value structure of the Internet. Efforts atinclusion always take for granted a standard that is already set. Butwhat if the needs and desires of the many billions that still need tobe included are not served by the Internet as it exists? Whatif, for it to really work for them, they need to be able to make theInternet a different place than the one we know today? While it isobvious that different people will give different answers indifferent parts of the world, such debates are complicatedtremendously by the fact that it is no longer sufficient to reach anational consensus on the issues under discussion, as was the case inearlier eras. The global nature of the Internets infrastructurerequires that the possibility of differing opinions, too, needs to befacilitated at the global level. What are the consequences of thisfor the development of democracy?

For access to the Internet to be substantivelymeaningful from a human rights perspective in the information age, itis crucial, then, that at a minimum, the openness of the Internet isensured at all levels. Of course, openness can be considered a valuein itself. But perhaps more importantly, at the moment, it is theonly way in which the possibility of a variety of answers to thepressing question of what shape our societies should take in theinformation age can emerge. Open standards and the portability ofdata, for example, are crucial if societies are to continue to decideon the role corporations should play in their public life, ratherthan having corporations de facto rule the roost. Similarly,under no circumstances should anyone be cut off from the Internet, ifpeople are to participate in the public life of the societies ofwhich they are members. And these are not just concerns fordeveloping countries: if recent incidents from France to Australiaare anything to go by, new possibilities facilitated by the Internethave, at least at the level of governments, formed the impetus for aclear shift to the right of the political spectrum in many developedcountries. In the developed world, too, the questions of access andwhat it allows for are thus issues that should concern all. In theinformation age, human rights will only be respected if such respectis already inscribed in the very architecture of its centralinfrastructure itself.

List of References

Castells, Manuel (2000). The Rise of the NetworkSociety, 2^nd edition. Oxford: Blackwell.

Department of Information Technology (DIT) (2006).Guidelines for the Implementation of Common Services Centers(CSCs) Scheme in States. New Delhi: Department of InformationTechnology, Government of India.

Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI)(2010). I-Cube 2009-2010: Internet in India. Mumbai: Internetand Mobile Association of India.

Kovacs, Anja (forthcoming). Inquilab 2.0?Reflections on Online Activism in India (working title).Bangalore: Centre for Internet and Society.

Singh, Parminder Jeet (2008). Recommendations for aMeaningful and Successful e-Governance in India. IT for Change PolicyBrief, IT for Change, Bangalore.

Telecom Regulatory Auhority of India (TRAI) (2010).The Indian Telecom Services Performance Indicators,October-December 2009. New Delhi: Telecom Regulatory Auhority ofIndia.