The role of technology, however, is often assessed by the overall enhancement in productivity and increase in national incomes. The potential role of technology in improving the lives of ordinary people — from reducing poverty, upgrading the delivery of public services to the enhancement of human development — is often hidden and unrecognised.
It is important to acknowledge this potential and to realise that technology, particularly its information and communication tools, offer unique and unconventional solutions to our conventional problems — poverty, poor quality of and access to public services and poor governance.
The virtual absence of public services, in many ways, lies at the heart of both low human development and poverty in South Asia. Take the examples of Bangladesh and India that can be replicated in Pakistan — they highlight how the successful application of information and communication technology has led to remarkable gains in improving access to public services particularly for people in remote rural areas.
Let’s start with access to basic health services which we all know are dismal, particularly in the rural areas. Hospitals and health units are few and far between and are often hard to access due to the poor infrastructure. Even when one is able to reach them, they are plagued with a plethora of ills of their own — an inadequate number of doctors and paramedics, outdated equipment, unhygienic conditions, to name a few.
Countries like Bangladesh have only 30 physicians per 100,000 people. In Pakistan, there are 80 doctors per 100,000 people — a ratio that is far from impressive. The application of telemedicine in certain parts of Bangladesh and India has circumvented the problems of geographical distance between physicians and patients to a great extent. It is a system by which patients can be examined, monitored and treated even if they are located in remote places. The patient’s reports can be sent via text, voice, images and videos, and medical advice is dispensed accordingly.
The Grameen Bank in Bangladesh has launched this project and has also launched Health Line, a 24-hour call centre manned by registered physicians to extend basic healthcare information and consultation. It is accessible to all Grameen phone subscribers and is an innovative way to provide basic health services in a country where there is only one doctor for 3,000 people. ICTs are also being used to extend awareness campaigns regarding preventive healthcare and hygiene. In the Rajasthan district of India, an electronic helpline facility has been set up for the prevention and the treatment of HIV/AIDS.
In the area of education, there are similar problems of poor accessibility to schools caused by infrastructure bottlenecks. Also problems such as poor facilities and lack of teachers result in the denial of education to thousands. The Computer Based Functional Literacy Method adopted in India in 2002 focuses on reading ability by learning words rather than alphabets and is a quick and efficient way to equip adults and children with literacy skills. The traditional method requires at least 200 hours of instruction to make a person functionally literate, whereas this new method has reduced it to nearly 50 hours.
The benefits of technology, particularly computerisation of records and e-governance, are even greater in other areas of public service delivery. The computerisation of land records, for instance, saves time and is a much more transparent system. Under the manual system, the village accountant enjoys a monopoly over land records and farmers and other land owners have to face harassment, pay bribes and go through complicated procedures and delays. Computerisation can eliminate many of these problems.
In the Indian state of Karnataka for instance, computerisation of land records under the Bhoomi project has eliminated these problems and resulted in an immense saving of cost and time — the venture has reduced this time to 10 minutes from over a week. Moreover, under the manual system, people incurred an expenditure of Rs100-500 as registration fee and this has come down to less than Rs15. The system also helps in monitoring government lands and prevents encroachments. Courts can also use the land record database for the settlement of various cases like that of ownership, possession and cultivation. Financial institutions can also use these for the approval of various loans and credits.
Despite all these potential uses of technology, the difference between its actual and realised potential in South Asia is huge, primarily due to the lack of technically trained and educated population and infrastructure jams particularly in rural areas. It is encouraging to note that the Government of Pakistan is realising the potential of technology and e-governance to increase efficiency and transparency. On July 7, 2009, the president addressed a meeting called to develop e-governance programmes such as computerisation of land records, electronic voting, and the use of technology for other services such as payment of bills, to ensure easy access to government services.
One hopes this important and useful directive is implemented. Since e-governance means greater transparency, it may be resisted by vested interests. We hope that the government understands that apart from political resistance, there is another major bottleneck and that is the lack of an educated and skilled population.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Sadia M. Malik
Quelle/Source: DAWN, 27.07.2009
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