| They include computerisation of the railway reservation system, dramatic success of the stock exchange and use of electronic voting machines
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Information technology is the highly visible sector on the economic scene today. The NDA government used to flaunt the observation made by Atal Behari Vajpayee that IT is Indias Tomorrow. The hapless India shining campaign apparently was launched based on an optimism generated by an optical illusion of prosperity in the urban centres of India like Bangalore, Noida, Gurgaon, Hyderabad and elsewhere. Now that we have got a government which swears by the aam aadmi, we may not now talk about India shining any more. Apart from an illusion of progress, IT has had an impact on other aspects of our lives also. It may be worth looking at the social consequences of the IT boom. The major impact of IT has been on middle class families, especially in south India comprising Karnataka, Andhra, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Forty years ago, these states also witnessed the affirmative action movement in the form of anti-Brahmins political ideologies. Tamil Nadu led the effort and Karnataka followed soon after. Since then, affirmative action in favour of non-Brahmins has been part of the dominant political philosophy of these states. Brahmins were systematically eliminated from all professional courses like engineering and medicine and government jobs, which they used to dominate, by an overgenerous 69 per cent reservation quota. It may appear that merit had become anathema in education or selection for government jobs.
The emergence of IT in this context proved to be a badly needed corrective measure, giving employment with merit as the only consideration. As a result, many middle class families, particularly those which were not backward, have been able to take advantage of the IT boom. Further, the IT revolution has almost coincided with the dramatic change in the economic policies of the government, which was dominated by the socialist approach till 1991. IT has played the role of a social corrective in another area also. Gender inequality has been a major issue in our society. The preference has been for the male child and the trend against the girl child has created severe population distortion in states like Haryana. In this context, IT has proved to be a great empowering instrument for girls. It is significant that 60 per cent of the students in IT courses in the southern states are girls. The economic liberalisation of the girls who compete on equal terms with boys has been a welcome corrective. Nevertheless, this has not been an unmixed blessing. There are reports that the divorce rates in the IT families are increasing. Many of them have adopted the DINK philosophy (Double Income No Kids).
The continuous stress of the 24x7 culture has also had its impact on the fertility of these couples. Joint families were the norm a few decades ago. Nuclear families became significant in our society, thanks to increasing urbanisation. The empty nest feeling became a common phenomenon, when in the nuclear families the youngsters came of age and set up their own families. A new type of empty nest has been added, thanks to IT and globalisation. Old parents have become care-takers of houses in India built by their NRI children. Grand-mothers have become regular nannies. (Grannies are nannies said a recent headline). Grannies make more reliable and positive baby-sitters any day. There is a third positive social impact of IT. So far as governance is concerned, IT has emerged as a potential instrument to check corruption. The computerisation of the railway reservation system, the dramatic success of the national stock exchange and the use of the electronic voting machines in elections, are three remarkable examples of the potential of IT for positive social impact in our society.
IT is the technology of our times. As we progress into the 21st century, let us hope the positive social impact of IT will over-whelm the negative ones.
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