Evaluating ‘Meaningful Connectivity’: Digital Literacy and Women in West Bengal, India

Abstract

AbstractIndia is witnessing a surge in both public-private collaborations and independent initiatives to use technology for ‘national good’. Do such initiatives provide advantages to citizens at grassroots levels in smaller cities or villages? How do we effectively gauge their benefits from the perspectives of their recipients, and evaluate digital literacy initiatives in a situated context? The chapter foregrounds voices of the beneficiaries of Internet-Saathi—a countrywide programme in India supported by Google and the Tata Trusts. It aims to understand how technological access impacts everyday lives of women in a specific, predominantly rural, district, Purulia, in the state of West Bengal. Drawing from in-depth semi-structured interviews with 17 designated ‘Internet Saathis’ between 2016 and 2019, this chapter employs a combination of the Capability Approach (CA) and Choice Framework (CF). This approach privileges processes that nurture substantive freedoms and conscious actions towards women-subjects’ own and others’ empowerment, and their eventual attainment of ‘mattering’. As a concept drawn from social psychology, mattering yields deeper insights into how these women participants perform as both recipients and agents of digital literacy in their immediate and wider environment. This helps to critically evaluate whether diffusion of devices and technologies bring about improved lived experiences, and insights on other barriers that persist.