Opinion Digital,not physical?

Low-cost,high-efficient,digitally-engineered machines for India’s poor: Overcoming tremendous day-to-day life hardships are those in the Rs 3,000-10,000 per month earning bracket within the 600 million population range. These people are surprisingly quick to respond to entrepreneurial challenges. But they desperately need mech+digi help. Unfortunately,there’s no research,and subsequently scant industrialisation of specific mech+digi low-cost,high-efficient,digitally-engineered machines. Raison d’etre for Western society’s digital space: Digi-space had a different purpose for the West,that of making life for their society always easy. Their invention platform invariably looked for better ways to reduce effort while increasing people’s comfort. Colonisation served the purpose of getting new sources for inputs to ensure predictability of everyday need supplies,some exoticism from foreign shores,and to experience life better. More importantly,they got slaves for manual labour to reduce their own physical exertion. Industrialisation was the elemental drive,which then led from mechanical to electronic to digital inventions. This helped create the mass market where low income $1,200-1,500 per month earners could pay for every day essentials. The spin-off from their slavery mindset was to displace manufacturing units so that other countries’ people can undertake the physical part of work. The result? All basic jobs packed off to poor countries. Even digital junk gets deported as hardware scrap. USA is world leader in e-waste,annually rubbishing three million tons,while Europe discards 100 million phones every year. Although they’ve understood that virtual dreams cannot fulfill life’s essentials,digital technology has enabled them to win the slavery game from afar. Today it’s called outsourcing.

Dissonance of Western digi with India’s poor people requirement: Satisfying the outsourcing needs of developed countries through digital technology opens up merely a few jobs,pubs,cafes; chic foreign cars and motorbikes become visible. If India concentrates only on global service business,the Rs 3,000-10,000 pm income band will never see a better life. There’s a sub-Rs 3,000 pm class below them too. In sophisticated coffee table discussion,they are designated BPL (below poverty line). The traditional rich and nouveau riche talk glibly in TV interviews about their donations to charities. They quote progress of the poor by throwing big-size statistics of mobile phone and TV set penetration in rural areas. But can virtual entertainment or information solve the basic needs of poor people?

Can digital technology shape Indian rubbish? Let’s not talk only of Western e-waste affecting India’s poor. The rubbish that society discards here is collected and sorted by poor people. We have irregular consumption and trashing patterns,with almost no modernisation of waste disposal systems. Most developed countries have five to six types of organised dustbins. The public follow the ritual of throwing different kinds of waste into designated bins. Littering is a national Indian pastime of rich and poor alike. Is digital technology intervention to change this paradigm possible? But clever BPLers perform a well-processed sorting job to earn a few rupees so that society at large can enjoy better hygiene.

Global disaster: Natural digi mutation is creating version after version to rationalise its worldly existence. Such restless virtual developments are signs pointing to another imminent global disaster like financial engineering that led to global recession. Every industry’s marketing purpose may require some trendy digi imagery to connect to youth,but can digi get basic enough to quell hunger pangs? Somehow we will always value the physical aspect. You don’t need any effort to see Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa painting as your mobile phone can download it. Yet,last year nine million people from around the world visited Mona Lisa in Louvre Museum,Paris.

Digital engineering’s unquestionable positives are here to stay. It’s time for Indian digi designers to start catering to the physical professional requirements of Rs 3,000-10,000 pm earners who need low-cost,high-efficient,digitally-engineered machines. Let’s achieve the developed country tag by 2020. Otherwise poor people will continue to clean rich people’s consumption aftermath dustbin as that becomes more and more of a mountain.

Shombit Sengupta is an international creative business strategy consultant to top management. Reach him at http://www.shiningconsulting.com