I read with interest a preliminary paper by Anikar M. Haseloff on Cybercafes and their Potential as Community Development Tools in India . From the abstract, the premise of the paper :
"Using public Internet facilities in order to access information and
communication technologies (ICT) is the main model of use after the
more common models of home use (individual ownership) and access at
work or at school/university. Especially in developing countries,
public and shared facilities help to create desperately needed access
and are a main strategy in several Internet access programs. In the
context of public access, cybercafes play an important role as the most
common Internet access model, especially in the urban areas of India.
It is often argued that cybercafes could help bridge the digital
divide, as they provide Internet access to people who cannot afford to
have Internet connections at their homes or who need help in order to
make use of ICT."
Some highlights and excerpts from the paper :
-
While in their initial stage a mostly urban phenomena, cybercafes
over the years have mushroomed throughout India, and today can even be
found in small towns and some of the bigger villages. They seem to
serve a crucial portion of Indian society as access points for the use
of computers and the Internet, as can be seen when examining the size
of this sector. As there is a lack of common definitions, regulations
for registration, and authoritative measurement, the exact number of
cybercafes in India can only be roughly estimated. There exist several
such figures, but they have to be seen as estimates rather than exact
numbers. In 2001 the Indian Market Research Bureau (IMRB) estimated
around 12,000 cybercafes in India (Achar, 2001). Since then the number
appears to have grown steadily all over the country, and Caslon
Analytics (2004, p. 4) estimates the number of cybercafes for all of
India as approximately 50,000 in 2004. The same figure is given by
Pasricha (2004). These estimates show that cybercafes are slowly
becoming part of contemporary city architecture in India and may serve
a large proportion of the Indian population as access points to the
Internet.
- Table 5: SECs and access place - (SEC = Socio Economic
Classification which is a matrix of occupation and education used in
research in India to reflect lifestyle, as opposed to mere income - A1
being the higher group and E the lowest). The table below from the
report is interesting - it shows that SEC B and C uses more cybercafes
than SEC A, as the latter group has greater access to the internet at
home and work.
|
SEC A1 |
SEC A2 |
SEC B |
SEC C |
Total |
Home |
37.8 |
22 |
12.5 |
6.3 |
24.1 |
Work |
59.2 |
47.5 |
30.4 |
15.6 |
44.1 |
Friend |
15.9 |
13.6 |
19.6 |
15.6 |
15.9 |
School/University |
26.9 |
25.4 |
35.7 |
28.1 |
26.3 |
Cybercafe |
67.3 |
61.0 |
71.4 |
75.0 |
67.3 |
-
The most frequently used service in the cybercafe was the World Wide
Web (90.3 percent), followed by email (72.3 percent),
phonecalls/netphone (52.1 percent), games (49.6 percent) and chat (48.7
percent). Almost half of those interviewed also used the cybercafe for
educational reasons, which may be related to the high number of
students. But it should also be noted that many teachers use cybercafes
in order to prepare their lessons.
-
More useful stats on cybercafe use by age, gender, employment and education status
Here's a signboard I took a picture of, outside a
'computer academy' which actually turned out to be a cybercafe in a
small town called Bakshi ka Talab in Uttar Pradesh, India :
[Thanks Rajesh for the link to the article]
1:45:42 PM
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