Opinion More to digitality inequality than access to phones

Digital sociological research

Using the field of education as a reference, I found that caste inequalities are reproduced and reinforced through various social, cultural, and economic factors. I conducted digital sociological research in Kerala, interviewing 45 students from five types of schools (rural government, urban government, CBSE, international, and vocational higher secondary) who belong to three different caste groups.

It was found that while upper-caste students have access to better technology, including high-end smartphones, tablets, and laptops, the access of Dalits, who are mostly from poorer backgrounds, is limited to lower-quality smartphones, which is considered as ‘under-connected’ by digital inequality scholars like Vikki Katz. The access to a secondary device and Wi-Fi connectivity increases digital autonomy and motivates students to incorporate technology into their daily learning and capital-enhancing activities. Furthermore, while Dalits are often confined to unfiltered, unsupervised online content produced for mass consumption, upper-caste students from middle- and upper-middle-class families have access to high-quality, paid online resources for their learning.

Other sociocultural factors

Apart from access, digital inequality stems from various factors, including family income, occupation, education, English language proficiency, neighbourhood, and numerous other sociocultural factors. For instance, English language proficiency poses a significant challenge for Dalit students to search, navigate, filter, and locate information. It is becoming even more vital as digital learning transitions into AI and Language Learning Models (LLMs) that demands the ability to prompt and engage with these technologies.

Thus digital inequality is not a linear, solely technology driven inequality. It is rooted in the sociocultural inequalities of the society. Upper-caste parents, leveraging their higher education, occupational exposure, and social capital, encourage their children to utilise all resources, including digital ones, for their educational and career advancement. However, the majority of Dalit parents, who are involved in low-skilled, low-wage occupations, lack these exposures and are unable to transfer such digital capital to their children.

Even though the rural-urban divide in digital and internet access is diminishing, new location-specific inequalities are emerging in the digital era. Upper-caste students, who generally hail from better neighbourhoods, are exposed to the possibilities of digital technology and the importance of incorporating technology into learning. In contrast, Dalit students, who are historically confined to poorer neighbourhoods in both rural and urban areas, do not receive such inputs. Additionally, the level of social pressure to incorporate technology into learning varies between these neighbourhoods.

Digital choices and digital society

Furthermore, the introduction of feedback loops and recommendation algorithms is exacerbating digital inequality. In particular, the digital usage of students, mostly Dalits, who share their devices with their families, is largely impacted by their family’s digital choices. This means that the educational disparities emerging from the advent of technologies will compound the existing ones, resulting in a cyclical and mounting process.

The future of the digital society does not seem promising. The permeation of digital technologies at the personal level is likely to increase the use of technology in learning and other areas of social advancement. However, as access to and the capacity to use technology is skewed in favour of the upper castes, social inequalities in India are expected to exacerbate.

Technology is set to create caste disparities across all age groups, starting from the pre-primary level. Digital resources such as school.in, Khan Academy, etc., are already predominantly accessed by upper-caste, upper- and middle-class children. This could result in an increasing divide between Dalits and the upper castes in terms of social advancement, educational development, economic advancement, power sharing, and political participation in future.

However, these digital inequalities may remain purposefully unnoticed and unaddressed by focusing on closing gaps in digital token access, which has become the sole yardstick for measuring digital inequality. Consequently, the inequality in digital participation and advancement may be misattributed to the cognitive inability, incapacity, or even perceived laziness of the Dalits, rather than the systemic myopia of the State and social institutions.

A holistic approach towards digital inequality issues is imperative in both academic and scholarly circles. The framework for access issues should be revised to incorporate the new technological developments including AI. Dalits, who have been economically, socially and mentally pushed towards the margins of society for generations, need to be prepared to leverage digital resources through policy, educational, and scholarly initiatives.

Mayukh Devdas is a Ph.D. student in digital technology and its impact on caste-based educational disparities at the University of Glasgow

Suraj Yengde, author of ‘Caste Matters’, curates Dalitality, and has returned to Harvard University