The Ambiguity of Development: A case study of Malaysia’s Multimedia Super Corridor*

-- AlfianKuchit - 29 Dec 2008

Dear Alfian,

A similar problem came up with the state of Andhra Pradesh in India over the use of ICT for development. Though the then Chief Minister, Chandrababu Naidu made talked a lot about using ICT for development in the State of AP, he mostly utilised the State budget to create multibillion dollar software technology parks for Big IT. Ultimately he was voted out of power for the same reasons. See http://www.globalenvision.org/library/7/619 . However, I do think that critical literacy is the only contribution that ICT could make towards development. A number of initiatives have shown that ICT can aid in increasing farmer price margins and empowerment through improving distribution networks and increasing price transparency. See http://www.digitaldividend.org/case/case.htm#asia

-- RohanGeorge - 01 Jan 2009

• Both your essay and Rohan's comment seem carefully designed to ignore the obvious. Andhra, like Malaysia, is a corrupt dictatorship with regular elections. "Capitalism" is a word used to describe the relations between outside parties who provide wealth to local power in return for the opportunity to exploit local resources, natural and human. The presence of the local market for local produce and exchange does not distinguish those regimes from nearby "socialisms." What distinguishes Kerala from Andhra or Malaysia is near-universal public education and literacy. "ICT," like any other term describing things rather than people's relation to them, is not social policy. Using 21st century technology to "make jobs," which actually means selling farmed brains to non-local capitalists below global market price, is the authoritarian alternative to using 21st century technology to make educated people. In an earlier state of global civilization, poor countries with educated people experienced out-migration of the skilled, who found or invented work for themselves in locales where their skills produced better lives for them. In the contemporary world, such workers also support their places of origin, because the institutions that make capital mobile enable remittances. In the digital economy, the skilled minds produced in poorer places can participate in higher-value activities without relocating, thus producing better lives for their community directly. The requirements are universal education, including acquisition of English--which is now the global second language; unimpeded access to the network regardless of ability to pay; and a guaranteed right to receive payments via deposit accounts abroad and make payments locally via the network. Whether this is called capitalism or socialism is irrelevant: it will require working democracy, and it will reduce inequality. For these reasons, Andhra and Malaysia won't go that path.

<--/commentPlugin-->