Still far away from ‘digital dividend’, ‘digital divide’

The gap is too large between the two estimates of Bangladesh population having access to internet facility.
 A World Bank (WB) study report has said nearly 148 million people (2014 data) in Bangladesh do not have access to internet. But, according to the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC), until March last, the number of internet users in Bangladesh was more than 61 million.
The WB report, styled 'World Development Report (WDR) 2016: Digital Dividends' was published in Dhaka at a function last Monday.
A report published in a contemporary, quoting an official involved with the publication of this year's WDR, said the mismatch in the number of internet user estimates is primarily due to two different ways of defining 'internet users'.
The BTRC considers an individual as internet user if he or she uses internet at least once in 90 days or three months. But according to the WB definition, an individual would be considered an internet user if he or she uses internet facility regularly and has the same at his/her residence. Does not the BTRC's way of estimating internet users appear casual?
However, Bangladesh does not have reasons to be ashamed of its track record, since there are some other countries that performed even worse. In neighbouring India, according to the WB report, more than 1.06 billion people do not have access to internet. The individual track record of China, Pakistan and Indonesia is also worse than Bangladesh.
Yet the estimate given by the WDR on internet users in the country does not match the tall claims that are dished out very often by the government leaders about the digitisation. They must have been misguided by the BTRC estimate. In all practical terms it is not fair to define an individual who has accessed the internet only once in three months as an internet user.  
Because of the poor access to internet, Bangladesh is, obviously, among many countries that have been failing to reap the digital dividends.
But that is not true in the case of India. Despite inadequate internet access, its IT (information technology) manpower has been helping India to earn foreign exchange worth billions of dollars. In the fiscal 2014-15, IT sector exports fetched $82 billion for India. That country also has developed necessary information infrastructures in some important areas, including agriculture, that are easily accessible via internet. The digitally literate farmers are enjoying the benefit of those facilities.
Until now Bangladesh is deprived of digital dividends because of the poor rate of internet access. But for the same reason it is not experiencing a problem known as 'digital divide'. The members of the affluent section in society are benefited to some extent by the internet use. But that is not contributing much to the social and economic inequalities. However, the problem would surface if appropriate measures are not taken to benefit the poorer section digitally.
For a country like Bangladesh, access to internet by the large segment of the population would mean nothing, if the same does not raise the level of the social and economic empowerment of the low income and poor people. If the WB definition is followed to determine the number of internet users, Bangladesh would continue to fair poorly as far as access to internet is concerned. The regular access, not once in three months, to internet through low-priced smart phones would be the best way to raise the number of the country's digitally-literate population. That will be not enough. The government will have to ensure that such access is used for the greater social and economic benefit of the vast majority of the population.  
Lots of people are seen always busy browsing the internet. But they do it for varying purposes, including some wrong ones. Some people are heard saying that internet has become a social menace. Such an opinion, however, cannot anyway dwarf the information revolution unleashed by internet.
However, the government does need to be truly active, not in words but in deeds, to reap the maximum possible dividends from digitisation and facilitate the country's population to share the same while ensuring a focussed attention to the have-nots.
Almost 80 per cent of the population own mobile phones, most of them are conventional ones. The price of smart phones has come down almost to the level of conventional phones. So, it is for the government to design information campaigns in areas of agriculture and education, in particular targeting the poorer and low income population both in rural and urban areas.
There is no denying that mobile phone call rates in Bangladesh are cheap. But that is not true in the case of internet use. Internet usage rates need to be brought down to an affordable level.
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