To make digitisation a success, it must be adopted as a thought, as a service, as a product at the micro level by individuals and at a more evolved level by communities
The media, the Government and the market is buzzing with talks of digitisation. Preparedness for it seems to have just begun, while expectations continue to soar. Which
way the trend will go, will be a testimony, which time will provide. Meanwhile, the insights on management of change may help chart out a definite path. Clearly, this intervention will not be the first for technological upgradation. It will also not be the first for modernisation.
Yet, today, it looks more tentative than is good for evoking a robust confidence in its steady progress. This so because it needs to be adequately registered that there will be limited digitisation without being accompanied by adequate change in the culture of the market place and service providers. Advertisements on dealing with the drivers of three-wheelers, tailours and whatever else do make a point. They are good as far as they go.
Modernisation is a multi-linear process. Development is a version of modernisation which has to be culture-specific. It moves best when it energises, cashing-in on the aspirations of the individual and communities. An illustration will prove the point:
There are territorial aristocracies, say in Gujarat of Kanbis and Patidars, in eastern Uttar Pradesh and western Bihar there is the community of Bhumihars. The list can be multiplied. The point to be made is the need to harness the collective psyche of these communities for development. More specifically, historical patterns have to be factored in. To be considered ‘distinguished' in the Bhumihar community, one has to be financial well-off.
Hence, when a relatively less prosperous Bhumihar arrives with a job, say in a multi-national corporate entity or lands a job abroad, from where he starts remitting money, displays a particular type of behavioural pattern. His first thought is more likely than not to let his financial prosperity be noticed by his community. He will do so at times by building a pakka house if did not have one or undertaking ostentatious spending during festivals or ceremonies or rituals.
His idea would be to let the community know that he has arrived in the elite group. For him to go in for tools of digitisation may not fit in with his overall plan. He would prefer much to deal in cash, making a public display of what he has, rather than discrete payments in the digitisation mode. Even a credit card may not fit into his scheme.
It would be erroneous to assume that all cash transactions are, by definition, symbolic of ill-gotten money. To give further cultural illustration when his daughter-in-law or daughter or son-in-law, is bid farewell, the elders, prefer to give a few thousand rupees in cash rather than in presents acquired through their credit card. The latter methodology may not fit in with his overall scheme and objective. This kind of a cultural paradigm cannot be wished away by flaunted Westernisation.
The major flaw in attempting a straight line modernisation is that it is a badly disguised Western-oriented theory which believes that all developing societies are and bound to be heading towards the ideals of contemporary Western society.
The kind of resistance, which Anglicisation, Europeanisation Americanisation, is facing in parts of the world, cannot be resolved by armorial intervention. Vietnam alone should have been a lesson to those who could read the writing on the wall.
These larger international patterns are visible even in national developmental paradigms and micro level. All traditional systems will not get debunked. They cannot be debunked in all parts of the world and at all levels, even though Kentucky chicken or McDonalds may be witnessed in the unlikeliest place.
Progressively, there is a tendency for individuals, family, groups, and communities to live in multiple concurrent worlds.
Digitisation as a thought, as a service and as a product, has to be adopted at the micro level by individuals and at a more evolved level by communities to make the kind of progress its protagonist seek to achieve. Embedding it in social realities is the better way forward. Worthwhileness of a cause by itself may not suffice.
(The writer is senior managing director and principal economic advisor, Protiviti India Member Pvt ltd)