Sundeep Sahay

1. Perspectives on Development Sundeep Sahay

2. What is this course about? • Key objectives: • To undersstanddevelopment • To understand ICTs in thecontextofdevelopment • To analyzethe ICT and developmentrelationshio • Is ICTscontributing to a betterworld Adopting a criticalperspective to understand theseissues and relationships

3. What is ICT4D? Image sources: http://www.iwmi.cgiar.org/2013/09/who-can-you-call/; http://www.indianneurosurgery.com/; http://www.elfinancierocr.com/finanzas/Walmart-ofrecera-clientes-alianza-Credomatic_0_389361074.htm; http://www.alternet.org/economy/black-lives-still-matter

4. Different Scopes of Development Development Scope 1: Agenda-Specific Development Development Scope 2: Geography-Specific Development Development Scope 3: Generic Development Any progressive change in a society Any progressive change in a developing country Particular progressive changes in a developing country

5. What is a “Developing Country?” Image source: http://www.oecd.org/dac/stats/daclist.htm

6. Knowledge Information Data Defining Information and Communication Image sources: http://www.northcountrypublicradio.org/news/npr/165206203/in-rural-china-new-leaders-aren-t-familiar-faces; http://www.flhsa.org/regional-leaders-chart-new-directions-for-improving-community-health; http://www.stephencodrington.com/Hub/HK_Blog/Entries/2008/3/12_What_an_experience_in_Majiang!.html

7. Some points of departure • Development is not a standalone concept, neither is it something new • It is linked with various other concepts • Modernization • Globalization • Growth • Various others • Historically, research and practice have focused on this topic • ICT4D is a legitimate sub-discipline concerned with these issues • However, it remains too little and peripheral, and rhetoric far exceeds action

8. Development Paradigms Adapted from: Ellis & Biggs (2001) and Heeks (2009a)

9. Some underlying critiques • Development: «making a better world for all» • No one will dispute this – it is feel good • Carries with it a neo-liberal ideology, which resontes with the Western notions of democracy, freedom and economic growth • But it also hides more than what it reveals – the world is (not) flat • The multiplicity of agendas in the development market • Power assymetries • Historical inequities Ny Powerpoint mal 2011

10. Critiques of ICT4D Source: developed from Prakash & De’ (2007) and Thapa & Saebo (2014)

11. Exercise Look online to find the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and identify the ICT-specific targets within those goals.

12. Critiques of ICT4D Source: developed from Prakash & De’ (2007) and Thapa & Saebo (2014)

13. Disciplinary Foundations for Development Informatics Sociology Science/ Technology Studies Organisation/ Management Studies Technology & Development Information Systems Development Informatics Development Studies Informatics Information Science Communication Studies Computer Science Governance Economics Source: Heeks (2010c)

14. Some perspetctives we examine • Classical and neo-classical economics • Marxisim and social transformation • Poscolonial perspectives • Development as freedom • Globalization, marginalization and development Ny Powerpoint mal 2011

15. The Neo Classical Perspective • 1944 Bretton Woods Conference – the “proximate beginning of international aid was the agreement to create an International Bank of Reconstruction Aid and Development” (Rostow 1985) • The foundational institutions – World Bank/IMF Ny Powerpoint mal 2011

16. Underlying principles • There is nothing called society - Thatcher • Top down approach to development planning…marginal space for local views • Neutrality of scientific knowledge • Economic rationality – “trickle down effect” • Universal applicability of scientific and economic principles.. • Superiority over traditional knowledge • Technology determinism as development strategy Ny Powerpoint mal 2011

17. Some critiques • GDP a very uni-dimensional criteria • Ulterior motive of promoting the first world’s strategic and commercial interests through recolonization • Being un-democratic • Merely comprising transfer of western technology, knowledge, resources and organizational forms to developing country to make them acquire “modernity” • “You will soon become like us“ – replication model Ny Powerpoint mal 2011

18. Some outcomes • World Bank ploughed more than USD 50 billion since 1975 without being able to make any dent on poverty • “The idea of development stands like a ruin in the intellectual landscape. Delusion and disappointment, failures and crime have been the companions of development, and they tell a common story: it did not work.”

19. Arturo Escobar's 1995 book Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World International development serves as a mechanism to promote the agenda of postcolonialism and cultural imperialism Poor countries have little means to decline politely Development seen as ontologically cultural Use of Michel Foucalts’s discourse analysis Another wonder example is Edward Said’s Orientalism “Development planning was not only a problem to the extent that it failed; it was a problem even when it succeeded, because it so strongly set the terms for how people in poor countries could live".[ l Postcolonial critique

20. Information Information Technology Technology Processes Processes Objectives and values Objectives and values Skills and knowledge Skills and knowledge Management systems and structures Management systems and structures Other resources Other resources Reality ICT4D System Design Gap Design-Reality Gap Model Adapted from Heeks (2002b)