IRIS32 Conference, Molde, Norway - My Speech (unedited)

Well, first of all, my heartiest greetings to all the researchers and the organizers of this wonderful event. Regarding me, my name is Devinder Thapa and, of course, I am not an Indian. I am originally from Nepal and currently I am employed as a research fellow in the University of Agder. Obviously, this is my first but not last appearance in IRIS conference and it’s my pleasure to be a part of Scandinavian research team. Although research is not a new term for me, doing IS research is a completely new experience Therefore, I am in a primary stage of developing my thesis proposal. During my first semester, I receive d a plenty of suggestions from my senior researcher and supervisor, that I should attend IRIS conference. Before coming to IRIS conference, frankly speaking, I had a very different impression or you can say hypothesis about this conference. For instance, it was pretty sure that Molde is a beautiful place, and there was a best chance to utilize University fund for some recreation, but I was not so optimist about synchronizing any research ideas. I was thinking like, ok, IRIS is a place where many homogenous actors from the Scandinavian region will come together and force me to enroll in their research tradition and finally translate me and my colleague to follow their research tradition. But, on the contrary, I found it completely different. As soon as we started our working group session, from the very beginning, I realized, this is the place where you can, not only, get our ideas more furnished but also facilitate other researchers to get more insight, and enhance own knowledge at the same time. In my personal case, I came here with fuzzy ideas, which were important I knew, but they were not in order to make a sensible network. Today I can boast, yes, my heterogeneous ideas are synthesized and they started forming a good sensible network. Definitely, the whole credit goes to IRIS32 team, which is truly a harmonious Network composed of heterogeneous actors, fortunately, just opposite to my hypothesis. Last but not least, IRIS games will be one of the memorable events despite not making the Robin Hood proud of me. Well, I will conclude my small notes here and once again, my sincere thanks to IRIS32 organizing committee and all the participants.

Hope to see you again in Denmark, next year.

Thank you, Tusen Takk

Re-conceptualization of Digital divide

With the outburst of Internet technology in the mid-nineties, the concept of digital divide also came into existence. Digital divide can be categorized into two dimensions such as external divide and internal divide. External divide can be defined as a digital gap between developed and developing countries, whereas, internal divide is a national level digital gap between urban and rural areas. For instance, in Nepal most of the Internet services are concentrated inside the Kathmandu valley, but rest of the rural areas is still deprived of these services. However, the initial concept of digital divide was narrowly focused on the gap between have and have-nots, for instance those who have access to computers and internet services and those who do not have. Similarly, mass diffusion of Internet in the developing countries has been rather misunderstood as economic and social change. Therefore, the researchers have re-conceptualized the concept of digital divide in a broader term. Re-conceptualization of digital divide, besides technological gap, contains the intersection of socio-economic status, gender, age, language and geographic location. In addition, it refers to the cultural dimension, inadequate infrastructure, and shortage of manpower. Broader interpretation of digital divide also include cognitive issues such an attitude of community people towards technology and their daily usage patterns.

Mark Warschauer in his book Technology and Social Inclusion illustrated that many information and communication technology (ICT) development projects failed due to narrow conceptualization of digital divide in developing countries vis-à-vis developed countries. Mark presented one example of an Indian project launched in New Delhi known as Hole-in-the-Wall. The objective of this project was to provide computer access to the city’s street children. They fixed five-station computer kiosk inside a booth with monitors shown through holes. The computers were without keyboard with special joysticks and buttons that substituted for the computer mouse. The computers were connected to the internet through dial-up access and operated by a volunteer inside the booth. They wanted to experiment minimally invasive education, therefore, there were no instructors. The idea was to allow 24 hour computer access to the street children so that they can learn at their own pace and speed. Initially, the project was hailed by researcher and government agencies. Huge numbers of children flocked to the site to learn basic computer operations such as MS office, and internet browsing. However, after conducting an empirical research, the reality turned out to be different. There were many shortcomings in the project such as frequent occurrence of technical problems, lack of context-sensitive contents in their native language; moreover, children spent most of their time in drawing with paint programs and playing computer games. Likewise, the hidden architecture of the computer stations made it difficult to supervise, instruct, and collaborate with other community organizations. Even the parents from the community complained that kiosk was harmful to their children because they spent more time on playing computer games instead of doing schoolwork. The example shows that providing only computers to rural people is not a solution for social improvisation. Therefore, the digital divide should not be counted by number of internet connections; however, it should be analyzed taking into account how technology interventions have been used to amplify the best social practices.

There is a need to offer community oriented meaningful computer courses instead of delivering particular software programs. We need to involve the community organizations in designing the context based curriculum. Mere rendering the software training is not sustainable in the long run. Instead of making donor oriented or politics oriented IT policies, it should be more people oriented. There is a dearth of people oriented IT policies which really make a difference in people’s lives. Fast spreading policies such as providing computer training to mass population can be attractive for pulling funds; however, sustainable development comes from the slow and effective penetration of the technology. Indeed, we need to consider both the factors and find the middle way to use the technology for mass dissemination and penetration. For instance, rural teachers might learn how to create their own technology-based materials based on local conditions rather than only using commercial software developed for other contexts. A crafts cooperative might learn how to develop and manage its own web site rather than posting its announcements on somebody else’s. Nongovernmental organizations might learn to establish and run their own networks of telecenters rather than just attending cyber cafes. Therefore, to bridge the broader digital gap and to provide meaningful ICT access, consideration of social context, social purpose, and social organization are significant irrespective of developed or developing countries. Otherwise, how could be know the impact of ICT on society without any consideration of the social context in which computers are used.

Although the cheap cost of computer devices can make it affordable to the poor people, social structures are crucial in determining who is able to access any technology and use it beneficially. In the context of Nepal, the role of leadership, vision, and local “champions” are crucial to the success of ICT for development projects. We should not repeat the mistake to overemphasizing the role of computer experts rather than of the best community leaders, educators, cooperative societies, micro financing firms and NGOs. Those who are capable of managing complex social projects to foster innovative, creative and social transformation will likely be able to learn to integrate technology into this task. For instance, to provide community based public access by NGOs such as e-Village in India, also, provide an opportunity with micro financing activities to rural ICT entrepreneur like Grameen Bank project in Bangladesh. In developing countries, it is neither feasible nor possible to provide computers to each and every rural community members, therefore, the intermediate organizations based on public private partnership (PPP) such as NGOs can operate community information services known as telecenters, equipped with computers, internet connection, fax and telephone. These community information service centers can retrieve meaningful information on health, agricultural product prices, educational material, or the government policies and disseminate the same to the rural communities.

In conclusion, pessimist society has blamed ICT for bringing the digital gap; on the other hand, the same ICT can be an efficient and effective tool to bridging the broader external and internal digital gap. Indeed, providing laptop to each child is not the only solution, the participation requires more than just physical access to computers and connectivity. They should be able to access the requisite skills and knowledge, and contents should be based on local context and language, furthermore, requires community and social support to be able to use ICT for meaningful ends. As Mark Warschauer stated that the tasks are large, but so is the challenge: reducing marginalization, poverty, and inequality and enhancing economic and social inclusion for all.

ICT for Rural Development and the Role of Media

I was watching a video recording of PM Dahal's speech at Nepalnews.com on 7 April, 2009. He was expressing his dissonance about the role of Media in spreading negative information to people. However, my article is not about endorsing the PM's statement neither to criticize the role of media. My objective is to pull media's attraction towards the subject of rural development through the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Ironically, media itself is a core component of ICT, however, little coverage can be found about the contribution of ICT in rural developments. Simple statements of political figures can be seen as a news headlines, on the contrary, it is difficult to find any column of ICT for development activities, not in a single passage. If we go through the World Development Reports and UNDP profiles, it seems millions of dollar has been already invested in the ICT for development projects. However, the actual impact on rural communities are unknown. Either there is null impact of these projects or media is not interested in disseminating the actual outcomes of these development activities.

We don't need to go further to experience the success stories of ICT implementation in rural communities. India is one of the star role model for us, where we can find plenty of examples. Illustrating one example of e-village, MS Swaminathan Foundation in Tamil Nadu has developed a novel approach known as e-village. They set-up different computer terminals in the rural areas. These computer terminals are pre-loaded with a database of useful information relating to government services, such as agricultural extension, health and the police that contain the relevant contact details for each village. They connected the ten villages together and selected a group of volunteers to run that village centre. Women have been given priorities to run that centres, and provide training courses to other women. In addition, technical support is provided by a central 'hub' situated in the nearby town Vilanur. The technical support centre is headed by some trained IT professionals. Training courses for up to 25 people can be held at the Vilanur hub and lager courses such as for making incense sticks and small scale paper production from banana leaves have been developed to facilitate livelihood diversification through small business activities. The daily information bulletins are sent by e-mail to the networked villages which receive a summary of the main news stories from the local markets each morning. With the growing usage of ICT, village people started applying this technology to new areas such as solar power and spread spectrum masts. Compared to costly telecenter models, the e-village provide more localised and low-key service at a fraction of cost. Similarly, if we look into our own local Nepal Wireless Network Projects run by Mahabir Pun. Who is doing a tremendous job by facilitating the ICT services - eHealthcare, eLearning, and eCommerce - to remote communities.

Similar ICT development projects can be implemented in other rural areas by deploying the existing frameworks with some readjustments. The role of media in this endeavour is to educate the people through telling success stories and the usage of ICT for development. Media can break the myth that IT artefacts are some kind of robotic machine that can be operated by limited expert engineers. They need to tell the people that a simple training program is enough to learn and use ICT services. For example, by learning simple email messaging they can communicate instantly and economically. They can read daily market information and news headlines in Nepali, accordingly. In my personal case, I asked my 60 years father to learn internet chatting so that we can have easy and virtually free communication at any time. This is just a simple example, however, ICT has a multiple macro level impacts as well. According to DFID sustainable livelihood guidelines ICT has a positive impacts on human capital, social capital, financial capital, natural capital and physical capital. For instance, distance education, improved communication between different communities, computerised and transparent micro-credit services, land record keeping. Likewise, improved accessibility to domestic and international markets for selling agricultural products.

Although there are many rhetoric of ICT for development, ICT itself is not a panacea. It can be an instrumental for development, if implemented in an effective way. Giving specific guidance through media channels on effective implementation of ICT artefacts, it enhances the impact level. Likewise, high level impact on human, financial, natural, physical, and social capital . And, enhances the accessibility of remote communities to global market. Consequently, reduces the digital gap between urban and remote areas vis-à-vis between developing and developed countries. As a result, most of the jobs concentrated in the urban centres can be disseminated through the use of ICT, which can reduce the migration of skilled population from remote to urban areas and improve the communal harmony. Then only we can realize the true meaning of the flat world.

This article is an attempt to appeal media fraternity, donor agencies, IT vendors, and policy makers, that we should encourage ICT development activities by all means. It is not an afford of single person or single community but we need a synergistic afford from all corners. As stated Developing countries have by-passed the industrial age and leapfrog into information age. Unless Nepal leapfrogs into the Information Age, the economic gap between Nepal and rest of the developing world would widen. And, the role of media in this transition phase is indispensable and vital.

This article has been published in the Kathmandu Post, Nepal.

New Nepal, New Leader, and New Approach – after CA poll

Recently I was reading a book by Jim Collins titled “Good to Great”; it was a survey of fortune 500 companies. The purpose of survey was to find out how a company turned itself from good to great. These companies started in an inverse situation but in the long run they proved to be a black horse. While reading, I found some of the factors to become “good to great” are essential to transform the system of our country as well. Then only we can truly see the new face of new Nepal otherwise it will be simply an old wine with a new label. The factors are level 5 leaders, first who then what, good decision making mechanism, and finally sense of discipline.

As Jim Collins describes “Level 5 Leaders” is an individual who is very humble on a personal level, but who possesses a great deal of drive and desire to succeed, where “success” is not personal, but defined by creating something great that will outlast for the generations. We also need a leader with a strong determination, will and commitment to do what is necessary to drive our country on the new direction of peace and development. The author advocates that “level 5 leaders” can be made because many people probably have the core abilities and attitude necessary to attain that status.

During the transformation rather than concern themselves first with the “what” - direction, strategy – they have to be ensured that we have the right people “on the bus” before anything else. By having a strong team, they can avoid pitfall of depending completely on one leader. As the author said,”Great companies are those that have a very solid foundation, and don’t depend on the brilliance of any one person. We need to give good people good opportunities, rather than the biggest problems. Fixing problems makes you good, but taking advantage of the right opportunities can make you great.”

One of the key factors in the success of the great companies was a series of good decisions. The good decisions flowed from the fact that they all made a consistent and thorough effort to confront reality, internalizing the facts relevant to their market. Similarly, our political system should pave a way to the economic growth of country instead of personally poking their nose in all corners of the decision making. It’s often better to ask questions rather than dispense “answers.” Encourage healthy debate. It has to be real debate, not a show put on to make people feel included. It should also not just be argument for the sake of argument - reach a conclusion and move on. When things go wrong, investigate to avoid repeating the mistake, instead of assigning blame. If people are too worried about protecting themselves, it becomes difficult to honestly analyze and learn from failures. Create mechanisms, that allow people to communicate problems instantly and without repercussions, and in a way that cannot be ignored. By maintaining this vision, and keeping their ear to the ground, it won’t be necessary to motivate people - they’ll be motivated of their own accord.

Other essential factors are the spirit of leadership and a sense of discipline. They are both necessary - without the drive to try new things, and some degree of independence, a system becomes a rigid, stifling hierarchy. Without some sense of discipline, system begins to break down. The best leaders have both latitude for individual action, as well as a culture of disciplined behavior. It’s useless trying to create rules to force the wrong people to behave correctly - it simply won’t work. Instead, we need to educate people and develop an innate sense of self-discipline that doesn’t come from above. There is a big difference between having a “tyrant” that enforces a culture of discipline by fear, and finding people who naturally adhere to a disciplined approach. The former will disintegrate when the leader moves on; the latter creates a lasting system.

Finally, let’s dream positively for the best interest of our New Nepal, New Leader and New Approach.

The power of positive thinking

It is quite difficult to define the positive thinking with concrete parameters. It is a completely subjective opinion of different people with different objectives. However, some books define it as a passion or fire in our mind to achieve our short or long term goal. Positive thinking itself is not a complete way of thinking; it consists of different personality traits like vision, planning, action, evaluation and determination. One of the complementary elements that go one-on-one is the self-motivation. Most of the time, to light the fire in our mind, we need motivational fuel that should come from our own inner sea field. Last considerable factor is luck. My understanding of luck is to finding a proper opportunity; it’s rather not a supernatural phenomenon. A powerful positive thinker can create opportunities in mid of scarcities. However, I don’t want to deal with this [luck] stuff further, it may create logical and illogical arguments. J

Most of the creatures in this world have the passion for sex and money. However, I am not discussing about the thinking backed by some evil forces. I read some unusual stories about people like Hitler, Idi Amin, and Charles Shobhraj. Although they were also having killing instinct, their passion was not acceptable to the large bunch of society. So we should not nurse such passion which eventually leads to the unacceptable obsession. Therefore the first and foremost rule of positive thinking is that it should be encircled inside the ethical periphery.

It is not necessary that the positive thinking always result as per our pre-defined goal. Sometimes it may be paradoxical. For instance, in my personal case, I was desperately working hard to go to UK for further studies, I was completely passionate, and I prepared well for IELTS, left the banking job etc. However, unfortunately or fortunately I could not pass through the VISA criteria, and landed through by-pass to South Korea. Since positive thinking in the real sense is to finding a new opportunities besides existing difficulties. At the meantime enhance your strengths and recover from your weaknesses. Utmost, this [difficulties] is the actual testing parameter of our positive thinking vis-à-vis vision, planning and action.

When I came to Korea I was just having a passion to do something but not a definite plan. Gradually I redefined my vision and planning, subsequently started working on it. As a result, I succeed to achieve the first short term objective of my life, my doctoral degree, for the time being. Even though the long term goal is still far ahead, however, I was able to discover my strengths and weaknesses. Furthermore, I know what is my long term goal and means to achieve that goal. Even if I could not manage to achieve the pre-defined goal, I am strong enough to light the fire of positive thinking and finding new ways in the face of awful difficulties. Because I have experienced the magical power of positive thinking, if it is properly planned, and wish any individual can form this attitude. There is no discrimination of cast, creed, color, or gender to get the benefit of the power of positive thinking.

Finally, I would like to say, the power of positive thinking can be realized if we have a proper vision, planning, action, and evaluation process. That should be backed by ethical values, self discipline, and strong determination. Even though, this write up is mainly focused on my self experiences of positive thinking; however it can be equally applied to any individual in a similar fashion.

My journey to PhD

There is a very strange correlation between my academic qualifications and academic achievements. My journey of elementary school started from Kaporthala, Punjab, India, where I completed my second grade. Thereafter, I went to my home town, Kalipatal, Baglung Nepal. I completed my III grade schooling from there. So switching from Hindi & Punjabi medium to Nepali medium was exciting.

My father who was serving in Indian army had the one and the only dream to highly educate his son. Due to the lack of higher educational institutions, it was quite difficult to make the dream come true in my home town. Out of the realization, he took me again to the neighboring country, India. It was, once again my reconnection to Indian educational system. I was admitted to Christian school, Jhansi, India, where I studied up to grade five. Actually, since army personnel moves from one place to another place after 2-3 years of their services in Indian Army, my father also moved to a new place; so did I.

My next educational mission was interestingly in Ferozepur, Punjab, India again. This was the time when I learned Punjabi Language. I was good at mathematics and science. Slowly my interest started spurting towards science. But there appeared one more turning point in my academic journey when my father got transferred to Himachal Pradesh, India. There, I joined government school to complete my SLC grade. I could not give continuity to my inner interest, as the syllabus was very easy for me, as a result I lost the attitude of hard working. From that school, out of 75 SLC attendees, I succeed to score the highest score though it was just 61%.

Likewise, my bachelors’ degree was in commerce & management, i.e. B.Com. I specifically mentioned B.Com, because there is a very interesting story, how I become bachelors of commerce. After completing my SLC, I could not get proper counseling. My father has barely received any formal education; however, he was passionate to educate his son. In that situation, I asked a guy who was assumed to be an intelligent. I asked,” Which subject do I have to choose to become an Engineer?” He replied,” Commerce is the best subject to pursue the further education in”. At that time, I could not differentiate that commerce is a management subject not the engineering one. In the very first day of my lecture, I was about to faint when professor started teaching about Dr. and Cr., Profit and loss, oh my god! Henceforth, I just enjoyed my youth, I was very fun loving and sporting guy instead of scholar.

Anyway, one thing is always common in my life; I never get afraid of taking challenges, so I decided to pursue my higher education in management. However, because of the lack of interest, I could not stand the top in the class. I was just a mediocre student. I graduated from the same state university. As soon as I graduated, I was standing alone on the road without any friends, searching for the destination. I was in such a perplexed situation that I even could not decide my next step.

Then another journey, I mean a physical journey from Himachal Pradesh to Pune, India. What a city! The city of intelligent people with good English language proficiency; but Debu was just a moron, a commerce graduate without any aim. All of a sudden, while roaming with my friend, my eyes happened to come across an advertisement. It was about Job guaranteed computer course from NIIT. My habit of accepting challenge and the lure of guaranteed job pulled my legs to the doorstep of NIIT. That was the turning point of my career. While in NIIT premises, I underwent a lot of complexities as I lacked proper education in high schools, and thereby I had many inferior feelings. Maybe readers will get surprised to acknowledge what happened there. Well, once again I found myself knowing nothing about computer. I was surprised when I saw a TV screen with keyboard, I asked myself whether I will manage to handle big robots and get excellent job in India.

It was until 1991 we could not see any fancy Microsoft windows; we had just the black screen with white character and some blinking cursor. I wondered about what the hell these MS-DOS, COBOL, SEMINAR, and PRESENTATION are. As I quoted in my website, “challenge is my motivation”. Every time I found myself standing way behind to others; but my desires, which were burning inside me inspired to penetrate any challenge ahead and thereby to realize the goal!! I then felt with passion to improve my two weaknesses, English language and Computer skills. And the passion guided my career to a complete new world switching from commerce to IT.

My father retired in 1992 and we came back to Nepal. The killing instinct was still nursing inside me. Consequently, I practiced and practiced to overcome the weakness. And my practices are still on. After all, I succeed to conquer my fear of public speaking, and so did in the areas of English language and computer programming. I completed advanced diploma in computer programming & Networking from NIIT. Consequently, I worked in many places as a Computer Instructor, System Administrator, Asst. Manager Technical, Group leader technical (NIIT) and so on. I later joined NB Bank in Nepal. And at the same time, with the hunger to enhance my further academic qualification, I joined MBS program with specialization in MIS, and passed with first division regularly. It was a good achievement indeed.

Then I found, my desires or hunger to earn and learn more, it brought me to South Korea. Once again my passion, determination and hard works lead me to PhD in industrial engineering. I am assured that this course finally synthesizes my knowledge of computer, mathematics and English. I can say that it improves my presentation skill a lot. I know the day when I will receive my PhD degree, one person in this world will be very happy, even happier than me and that is no other than my Father.

This is my overall journey from elementary to PhD, I started as a SLC topper, then mediocre commerce graduate, and about to be a doctor of philosophy in Industrial & Information System Engineering (of course, scoring high grades with many publications). Even though this is a remarkable achievement for me, it is not the final accomplishment of my goal. The life is an ongoing process; the process of leaning from cradle to grave. It has to go on and on......