India and the Digital "divide"

Hmm trying to blog on something after a really long time. Work has kept me very busy off late and this blog is well... about my recent work experiences. My current job profile is taking me places ( literally tat is :) ) .. exposing me to the digital divide which exists in this country. Well I am not talking of the usual rural-urban divide which the media often highlights and says that IT in rural india will solve all the problems but a divide of a different kind. Read on ......

Picture this .. you are to visit the IT head office of one of the largest PSU banks in the country for a meeting.(The head office is located in the heart of the "cyber" city of India).Like a good IT guy who is meeting the client, you email the entire meeting agenda and other documents relevant to the meeting...hoping that the IT head reads the whole thing and is aware of the meeting agenda.
Circa the day of the meeting .. I am at office and wat do I see ? The client contact has 3 copies of the documents/agenda nicely binded in the XXX bank folders.. whats more every single email yours which you have sent during the course of this project is nicely printed and labeled/filed in a cabinet next to the manager.. I look at the "paperless office" poster hang over the manager's head ....ahem . ahem ..

The next meeting also in the hitech cyber city ... but this time in the ghettos of government offices. I am entering one of the first "IT enabled" departments of the state Government for a meeting...and I am meeting the IT director.. As is usual in the babudom, the person I am supposed to meet is yet to come to the office for the day ( it is 11:15 am already .. the meeting was supposedly held at 11 am) ..
so I wait in the "cabin" of the director .. the assistant IT director's seat is next to the directors.He is scribbling something in a big register looking extremely busy but every 2 mins he switches on the monitor of a swanky dell desktop and checks on something for a few seconds and then goes back to the register. The routine goes on for a few minutes and then he checks the monitor again and says " Chey.. Sachin out .. India batting waste !!" .Voila it turns out that he checking the desktop only for cricket match score ....otherwise his "normal" work is to do fill in the daily transactions in a ledger which in turn will be entered into the system by a "computer operator" .
I want beat my chest like Saif did in Dil Chahta hai ………. So such goes the digital divide in the country … more the rural-urban divide later …….. yes. my work takes me to the heart of India .. the villages ………