Sushma Ramachandran

Senior Financial Journalist

The chief executives of the worlds four most powerful tech companies were grilled recently by the US lawmakers on a wide range of issues, ranging from competition to alleged theft of data by China. Apple, Facebook, Googles parent company Alphabet and Amazon had to face a barrage of questions that could ultimately decide the future course of monopoly laws in the US. Simultaneously, Australia has laid down regulations to ensure that tech giants will have to pay for the use of news from media outlets. Both developments are of immense relevance in India as these same companies dominate the digital arena here.

Even as Big Tech is facing potential curbs, these entities are also seeing a huge surge in growth and profitability at a time when the global economy is facing severe disruptions owing to the pandemic.

Amazons profits, for instance, rose by 40 per cent in the April-June quarter. Over the same period, Facebooks profits spiked by an unreal 98 per cent, while Apple recorded a 12 per cent growth. Alphabet was relatively a laggard with three per cent profit, but revenue increased by 13 per cent.

In contrast, the world economy is set to contract by as much as five per cent during 2020. The divergence is because the consumption of online content has risen exponentially while the overall demand for other products has fallen precipitously.

Amazon has benefited not just from its Prime Video content but also from the ease of online deliveries at a time when buying from brick and mortar retail outlets has slowed down. Other streaming and OTT platforms have also got a boost globally and in this country.

This has altered the established advertising-cum-subscription model, with ad revenues dipping and subscribers rapidly growing. Some media reports say subscribers have risen by as much as 60 per cent ever since the pandemic began.

The top player in the Indian market currently is the Disney-Hotstar brand with an estimated eight million subscribers followed by Amazon Prime, SonyLiv, Netflix and Voot as well as a host of others.

The other gainers in the digital space are gaming apps which have seen an enormous growth during the lockdown period. Fantasy sports apps are expected to see a spurt as soon as the IPL is revived. The digital arena, thus, continues to thrive at a time when the global Covid outbreak has threatened the very existence of traditional businesses.

A parallel occurrence to the growth of tech giants has been a widening of the digital divide in this country. This has followed a shift to online education after the schools closed down all over the country since the lockdown was imposed at the end of March.

Children with access to devices like smartphones, tablets, computers or even televisions, have been able to utilise the new mode of teaching.

Others, including the urban poor and those in rural areas, have simply been left rudderless without any teaching facilities for months on end now.

Tragic stories have surfaced of children and even parents committing suicide because they could not afford to buy smartphones. Voluntary organisations and individuals have begun drives to provide computers and televisions to children in many parts of the country.

An initiative has even been launched to provide used devices to the needy students. The fact is that this is just not enough to cover the millions of children who need to use online education. Official data says there are over 35 crore students in the country, but no data is available to show how many have access to digital devices or the Internet.

A study done by an NGO of over 40,000 children, covering 23 states in April, found that about 56 per cent children did not have smartphones. Apart from the devices, the other issue was connectivity problems with the Internet.

The Kerala government has tried to overcome this problem by offering classes on television. But this approach has a lacuna as there is no possibility of an interaction with the students.

With online education likely to remain a reality for some more time, it is time to adopt innovative solutions to ensure that millions of children do not lag behind their more affluent peers. One way could be to copy the model of universal healthcare and adopt the slogan of universal smartphones for schoolchildren.

Indigenously made smartphones or tablets could be mass produced and provided to all students of government schools. This would not only provide students with the much-needed devices, but also give a fillip to indigenous smartphone production, a cause close to this governments heart.

But this could take a while and fail to solve the immediate crisis facing the countrys students. Another option could be to open the schools gradually, keeping social distancing norms in place.

And finally, the third and most attractive option could be to tap the deep pockets of the tech giants that are raking in profits right now

during the pandemic. Let them use their enormous resources to provide tech-based solutions to the millions of underprivileged children who cannot access any form of education right now. The fact is, unless the digital divide is bridged, there will be a long-term, adverse impact on these young students. The prosperity of the tech giants is growing owing to their access to the Indian market.

It is thus entirely in the fitness of things that they join hands with policymakers here to provide a concrete solution to the digital divide at this critical juncture.

The government needs to open a dialogue with Big Tech companies and try to solve this problem with their help. Otherwise, the prolonged break in the educational process could have profound ramifications for the youth of the country.

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Tap tech giants to bridge digital divide in education - The Tribune India