“Come and sit!” That was the invitation Sharafat Ali made me, when I asked him what he had been learning in the past couple of weeks. The boy, who couldn’t have been older than twelve, kindly showed me a place to sit in his friends circle, while grabbing a couple of batteries and wires in his hands.
Almost 27 years ago the World Wide Web rolled out the red carpet for the public without discrimination. Yet, today we stand here still talking about a digital divide that continues to exist, pushing people further into marginalisation, now more than ever before.
“There is a crisis of a condition that has happened in our lives as the members of the human society. The condition being that we are now isolated and our regular interaction suddenly disrupted.
Abhinav Pandey is a SoochnaPreneur (Information Entrepreneur) from Guna, Madhya Pradesh. He has been working on the ground to ensure the community’s safety from the corona virus by delivering money to their homes from the schemes that the government has put in place for them. Many of them, whom Abhinav is helping, didn’t even know that such schemes existed; he informs them of their entitlements and helps them avail the same online.
Prabhu, a 29 year old digital entrepreneur has been working in the district of West Champaran, Bihar, as a DEF representative from the past few years. As a digitally equipped SoochnaPreneur (Information Entrepreneur) he has been diligently serving the people in his village Fachkahar by providing access to digital services and ensuring government entitlements.
Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF) through its flagship programme Chanderiyaan has been demonstrating the power of digital intervention to improve the financial status of traditional artisans of Chanderi in Madhya Pradesh and creating a model for traditional-skill based clusters for over 10 years now.
Covid-19 DEFDialogue is a special series initiated by Digital Empowerment Foundation where the Founder & Director Osama Manzar connects with key individuals within the DEF network in 600 locations across 25 states. The interaction will help find out how COVID-19 and the lockdown situation has impacted their areas along with the measures being undertaking to tackle it.
“We need immediate help to ensure our mobiles are working and we can make calls,” said one of the migrant workers stranded on the road from Delhi towards Bundelkhand. Another said, “Our pre-paid amount is over and we do not have money to recharge our phones.” 2000 out of 12000 migrant workers, who started travelling back to their homes, made a call to a toll-free number to complain and seek help for their mobiles to be topped-up and recharged.
As public health and safety measures like social distancing and lockdowns demonstrated agile responses like work from home for many of the urban milieu, a rapid assessment survey by Jan Sahas showed how migrant workers were evicted from informal settlements or labour camps and abandoned by their labour contractors with unpaid wages.
