Arjun Bikram Sharma

I could not update my blog for sometime as I was quite engaged with study project related to city learning centres. But I have been reflecting continuously inside my educational setting.  In fact, I had started to blog in order to improve my literal expression of thoughts. At this moment I have been feeling to reconfigure this platform to express and reflect all kinds of activities. 

In my past expression about ‘education and social change’ I had taken support of some concept from Prof. Glenn Omatsu which I felt relevant on my thoughts.  It was my enthusiasm to have an overview of present educational state that I am acquainted with. I reflected on the same. In between this period, I have been engaged in various ways to interact in real world as well as virtual world. In real context, I have been meeting and interacting with several key people related with education and technology (mostly) during my project activity. This has given me a realistic opportunity to interact with English education, culture, and work environment. To some extent it’s also a way of socialization…It also supports me to contrast and compare English, Dutch, Nepalese, Asian and other culture. I have also been able to meet and experience many people from various background, culture and region at the same time.  Every individual has different meaning and significance that can be felt and learnt. When not seeing at the impact and outcome then I can say it enriches life experience in many ways.   

Next, I have also been experiencing the virtual world for various purposes. Facebook has enabled me to reconnect friends from the past and connect few new friends. Lately, I also joined twitter. It has ability to add the intensity and pace of social interaction. LinkedIn has more professional values and much focused on professional connection than just socialization.  Looking at technological aspects, Web 2.0 technology has been highly influential as virtual social networking application. It seems like web 2.0 technologies is advancing and also influencing the advent of smarter internet based applications. But from socialization perspective, it might have various views. For me, both real and virtual medium are important and has its own value. I see these tools are able to make social interaction dynamic and vibrant. Good tools when used appropriately, effectively and efficiently can be so much valuable.  It depends on how we use and for what purpose. When I try to look the relevance of social interaction in virtual setting then again I remember the relevance of Prof. Glenn’s model of social interaction. His model states a multidimensional relationship between awareness, action, values emotion and self reflections through social interaction.  I have re-sketched his model and trying to look from my own perception about individual development of human being.  

Being a human being we imagine of civilized communities where each individual has a sense of worth, accepts responsibility for self and  family, accepts responsibility of society and societal well being, accepts responsibility for nature and natural resources. But nowadays we often hear about  massive destruction and degradation of environment, production of nuclear weapons, religious war, socio-political conflicts, and economic crisis in different parts of the world.  What are the reasons of this crisis and who is responsible to create these enormous problems? We also know that these problems are neither created by the beings of another planet nor other beings than human. They are all created, evolved, and rooted in our communities, nations and by us. It can be considered as normal if the problems or effects were minor which might have been eventually  generated while performing constructive developments. But this is not the case. It has already been created such many massive destructive things in our communities and nations. Every communities and countries has their own type of problems. The only difference is some have lesser problems while others have relatively more and vigorous. But all these problems are interlinked and global when we look deeper inside. Each problem will impact the communities and nations directly or indirectly.   Read the rest of this entry »

Use of ICT should not create a gap and division among the people and communities rather it should help in strengthening communal unity as well as socioeconomic development of society. Access of ICT and tools at community level might depend on various factors. These factors can be socioeconomic state, accessibility of technology, infrastructure development, level of awareness and literacy etc. Further in general if we categories the globe into highly developed, developed, developing and poorly developing nation then it can be found that ICT has been implemented for different roles and so the impact in those communities. Therefore the role of ICT can be seen from multidimensional perspective in each community level. Depending on the situation, context, purpose, ICT at community level has been applied as telecentres, multipurpose telecentres, community learning centres, telecottage, skill centres, community information centres, community multimedia centres etc.

Latchem C. and Walker D. in their case studies of telecentres implemented at various communities around the globe have made precise analysis of them. I would like to summarise some of them here. Read the rest of this entry »

 Information and communication technology (ICT) has already been experienced as one of the most powerful development of 21^st century. The development, diffusion and use of ICT have brought revolutionary changes in various sector of the globe. There is no doubt that the formation of knowledge economy, globally interconnected societies is the result of development and usage of ICT. The development and usage of ICT like other development has varied greatly from societies to nations. But something different that we can see is that this technology has changed the pattern and dimension of development. For example several developing countries like India, China and other such countries which have favoured ICT development and usage have highly benefited in the development and growth of economy. Similarly developed countries are able to construct a strong knowledge based economy, informed and networked societies using the potential of ICT. This is realised true when we see only the developed part of it.  But when we try to see the other part being specific and from many aspects then a question arises if every nation, societies are really able to exploit the power and advent of ICT? Then the answer is not that easy as we explain. Like several other advents and developments ICT is also creating a dangerous gap between people, societies and nation. This negative and dangerous impact might be in same or different pattern but if this development brings divide and inequity among people and societies like other in the past then this is a real challenge.

Becoming aware of this issue I am trying to analyse various possibilities of ICT in overall development of developing countries. This might be as well implied for developed countries in some cases.

ICT has been now taken as a major sector for economic development by many nations. India has tremendously developed IT market and thus contributed in the economic development of its region. There may be different ways and preferences to use ICT in economic development. But ICT has become a major part of economy is several other developing as well as developed countries. Automation work, software development, development of communication and such other information tools has generated a huge market creating a huge economy. This has created a competitive human capital, knowledge oriented market, lot of new jobs and income for people thus increasing consumption in overall market. ICT has greatly contributed to stimulate the economic growth in some developing countries like India, China and some other developing as well as developed countries. India has developed itself as a back office for global destinations by taking outsourced technical and customer service work.  Software development and export also contributes a lot in economic growth of India. China’s economy is greatly supported by export of ICT tools, devices and software’s as well. This has proved that ICT can greatly support in economic growth and development. 

When we look at the overall development of the society and the role of ICT for socio-economic development then we can see a very large vacuum. It has been generally seen that ICT is revolving within urban region, few organizations and people in developing countries. In developed countries also it has been noticed an increasing digital divide, difficulty in accessing ICT technology and its optimum usage has also been seen as a problematic issue. The bitter truth is that many developing countries still remain rural in terms of infrastructural development and people suffer from chronic poverty. In Nepal, thirty-five percent of total population lives in poverty, nearly fourty-five percent people are illiterate. Those people have no access to clean drinking water, food, basic health, education.  People have very low income or no income. People are unskilled so have very low wage rate. Minority groups have not been integrated in the main stream of social development. There exist several ethic group based on language and origin who don’t understand official language. There are divisions between castes, ethnic group, and religion. Huge population lives in rural area where there isn’t infrastructural development.  In this preface many question can be raised. Can ICT be an important tool for the socio-economic development? Is ICT able to reduce poverty, improve livelihood and empower people and society? Read the rest of this entry »

A drastic change can be seen in the politics of Nepal. CPN Maoist has emerged as a largest party in the recent general election. There are several interpretation and views on this result. What ever be the reasons of this result the reality is that people have entrusted Maoist in the general election and have given an opportunity to show and fulfil their commitments. People have also showed warnings to the conventional and democratic main political parties like Nepali Congress and CPN UML electing them as second and third largest parties. These parties were unable to fulfil the desires of people and maintain peace in the past before the active monarch took over the power. Monarch has been completely abolished which was very active lately but had failed to solve the problems and expectation of people. There are various interpretetion about this unexpected result and cause effect of this political change in Nepal. I had left Nepal when there was triangular conflict between so called democratic forces (Nepali Congress, UML), politically active monarch, and the revolutionary Maoist of Nepal. All of them were trying to exploit each other for their own benefit to empower themselves and capture the power of the state. But finally a situation came that democratic forces joined hand with rebellion Maoist to restore democratic republican system in the country by fighting against the monarchism. They had agreed to work together for a common stance of Democratic Republic. They have succeeded to achieve their goal. Nepal is now a Federal Democratic Republic country. This is a revolutionary political change in the history of the world. It is unbelievable that the nature of this political change was comparatively peaceful and quite diplomatic when we look back to the history of the world. I think it was because of enormous participation of public, civil society, support of neighbouring countries and international communities. Read the rest of this entry »

After three and half year I managed to be able to visit my country. I was desperate to meet my mother, sister, relatives and friends over there. But I was also curious to see and feel the changed political, social scenario. I was overwhelmed when I reached over there. The political civil war had come to rest and the country was trying to come out of this transition state. 15000 lifes had alerady ended. Lots of families and peoples were disabled, displaced and directly affected in thier living. Others many were indirectly affected in thier livelihood. Distruction of infrastructures can’t be simply predicted. But after 12 years of severe time some rays of peace and sign of hopes could be seen on the faces of people. Ordinary society and people wants peace. They want to  work, sustain and live. They do not know much about the political doctrines which comes and brings impacts within them. Because of interrelationship between people, society and distribution of resources there comes a need to manage it.  And unknowingly there comes  politcal doctrines which divide people and society instead of providing a pure solution. These doctrines when not able to solve the problem of people efficiently but instead spreads egoism, groupism and division among the people. It bring frustartions among the citizens. And there starts a civil war. I think this a inner reality of my country. I remember 15 year past from now. There was less awareness but there was peace and harmony among people. This means people themself dont create problem but politics and the managers of the ploitical doctrine injects impurities in the society inorder to achieve power and rule them. This happens when civil society are less aware and weak. But the universal truth is that this does not last for long time. It explodes when it reaches to the extreme point. And a  bitter reality….  240 years monarch gets abolished. Democracy never becomes stable. Until and unless citizens are aware, self dependent and included in national spirit then a peaceful solution cannot be expected.  Now it is time to begin by correcting the past mistakes and  sewing seeds of hopes, harmony and prosperity among people. I can hope the political groups have realised their mistake and will correct themsleves in the coming time to see. Read the rest of this entry »