Southern States
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Karnataka-Bangalore
Shared access to computers here to stay
By Our Staff Reporter
BANGALORE, DEC. 5. Shared access to computers will be a way of life in India, in the foreseeable future, Dr. Abhijit Lahiri, Adviser, National Information Systems for Science and Technology, Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, Government of India, has said.
He was delivering the first of three Curzon-Seshachalam Endowment lectures organised by the Board of Trustees of the Sarada Ranganathan Endowment for Library Science, Bangalore, in collaboration with the National Centre for Science Information, Indian Institute of Science, at the institute premises, here on Wednesday.
Statistics of low penetration of personal computers, telephones and the Internet in India were misleading said Dr. Lahiri, as things such as cyber cafes were discounted. In the Indian context, cyber cafes, for example, represented a perfectly cost-effective mode of accessing computers and the Internet, he added.
The three-lecture series is titled "The widening digital divide: Community information services: State-of-the-art in India". In the first lecture, "Digital Divide, Quo Vadis," Dr. Lahiri defined the divide as being an "uneven diffusion of the access and benefits of ICT (information communication technology)."
He then spoke about the various economic, social and political and demographic factors (divides) that fed the increasing digital divide in India. In this context, he said that shared access to computers made sense, especially because creating access involved an investment.
In the remaining lectures on Thursday and Friday, he will speak about specific examples from India, where community information systems, are being tried out.
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