The Daily IIJ

Poor people in Bangladesh are more likely to own mobile phones and televisions than the same group in India, but the availability of computers in poor Bangladeshi households is almost zero, according to a recent study.

The survey by LIRNEasia – a Sri Lanka-based information and communication technology (ICT) policy and regulation think tank dealing with the Asia-Pacific – also revealed a comparative reluctance among poor Bangladeshis to buy radios.

Experts, however, say the lack of individual access to computers among the poor can effectively be offset if the government offers community access to computers, after making people aware that many solutions to their problems can be found using computers.

LIRNEasia’s study found that, on average, there is no computer in every 100 “bottom of the pyramid” households in Bangladesh, while the amount of poor households that own computers is four percent in Sri Lanka, three percent in Pakistan, and one percent in India.

According to the study, the number of poor households in Bangladesh that use phones, especially mobile phones, is 41 percent, while it is 38 percent in India, 39 percent in Pakistan, and 64 percent in Sri Lanka.

Some 52 percent of households in Bangladesh own television sets, compared to 50 percent in India, 68 percent in Pakistan, and 80 percent in Sri Lanka, according to the study.

The organization also studied the prevalence of radios in poor South Asian households and found that only 13 percent of poor households in Bangladesh own radios, while the numbers are 28 percent for India, 24 percent for Pakistan, and 77 percent for Sri Lanka.

The LIRNEasia researchers asked poor South Asian mobile phone users whether they use their phone at least once a day for business purposes, and the highest number of positive responses came from Bangladeshis.

Faizullah Khan, president of the Bangladesh Computer Samity, disagrees with the notion that the Bangladeshi poor can in no way afford computers, while Indians and Pakistanis can. Disputing the country’s much trumpeted success in mass education, Khan said, “Effective literacy had not been ensured for the poor people.” He said that the lack of Bangla-based computer operation systems and software also make computers more difficult to use and less useful to poor Bangladeshis, whose knowledge of English is next to nothing. “In spite of the fact that Bangladesh has no duty on computers, its computer usage is the lowest in South Asia,” said a leader of local computer hardware vendors.

According to The New Age, Ananya Raihan – executive director of D.Net (Development Research Network), which is working to develop an ICT network throughout Bangladesh – said that if the per capita income ratio is considered, the cost of computers is high, at least for the poor in Bangladesh. He also said, however, that individual access to computers cannot contribute significantly to the social and economic development of poor people in a developing country like Bangladesh. In order to make information and communications technology services useful for poor people, community access to computers is essential.
“Community computer centres in villages can serve poor people adequately,” said Raihan. “But people will go there only when useful solutions to their problems are there. Countrywide community ICT centres are essential for materialising the dream of a digital Bangladesh,” said Raihan.
We know in Bangladesh have great poverty, discrimination, lack of good education system. In this situation, Bangladesh government how could establish digital Bangladesh?