Report red-flags digital gap based on gender, caste

Over 61 per cent men in India owned a mobile phone in 2021 as opposed to 31 per cent women, said a study by Oxfam India, revealing the stark gender disparity in the country.

The report, 'India Inequality Report 2022: Digital Divide', released on Monday further found that 8 per cent of people under the 'General' caste category had access to a computer or a laptop compared to 1 per cent of Scheduled Tribes (ST) or 2 per cent of Scheduled Castes (SC).

On average, the report said, a general category person was 10 per cent more likely to have a phone than someone from the ST community during the period from January to April 2018. This gap dropped to 3 per cent by the end of 2021, it added.

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The report also said that Sikhs and Christians were most likely to own a computer, followed by Hindus and Muslims, respectively. "Among Sikhs, 88 per cent did not have a computer by the end of 2021, as compared to 98 per cent Muslims," the report said.

In all, the total percentage of respondents without a computer or laptop was 93.5 per cent in January-April 2018, which further increased to 96.6 per cent by the end of 2021, pointing to the widening of the gap after the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Explaining the methodology used, Oxfam said the report relied on primary data from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy's (CMIE) household survey from January 2018 to December 2021 on internet access, mobile ownership, computer and broadband availability as well as report analysis from the National Sample Survey (NSS) data.

"The data collected is in waves, each wave comprising four months. To assess the pandemic’s impact on access, waves 1 to 6 (January 2018 to December 2019) have been compared with waves 7 to 12 (January 2020 to December 2021), termed pre-pandemic and post-pandemic, respectively. One limitation of this analysis is that it is not intersectional. We are looking separately at access to technology by caste, religion, income, etc," the report said.

Only 2.7 per cent of households among 20 per cent of India's poorest households have access to a computer, with only 8.9 per cent having access to internet facilities. On the other hand, the report revealed that among the 20 per cent of India's richest, 27.6 per cent and 50.5 per cent had access to a computer and internet facilities, respectively.

Citing NSSO data, the report further stated that only one-fifth of the population could operate a computer or use the internet. “While the number of internet subscribers has been going up, and over 34 per cent of the population accessed the internet in 2017, only 17 per cent had used the internet in the previous month as per NSSO."

Permanent salaried employees were the most likely to own computers and the difference between the percentage of permanent salaried and daily wage workers having a computer was as high as 22 per cent from the time period between January and April 2018, and was still 15 per cent by the end of 2021.

"Estimates suggest that the urban population is 7 per cent to 8 per cent more likely to have a computer than the rural population. Comparing the pre- and post-pandemic data, 99 per cent of the rural population did not have a computer post the pandemic — an increase of 2 per cent — while the urban population witnessed an increase of 7 per cent to 91 per cent.