Sheetal Bootoli’s husband refused to let her touch the mobile phone.
“What will you do with it? You’ll spoil it,” he said.
It is an attitude very familiar to women in rural India.
Illustration: Mountain People
However, four months later, Sheetal, 32, is teaching other rural women in and around Bootoli Village, near Alwar, Rajasthan, to use the Internet. Every day, she gets on her special “Internet cycle cart” containing two Web-enabled smartphones and two tablets. She cycles through cotton and onion fields to give local women instruction on going online.
The Bootoli women’s experience of the world has previously been limited to a trip to Alwar, 28km away, to see a doctor. Now, they are getting their first taste of the vastness of the Internet.
“My husband has just got a smartphone and now I’m the one who teaches him about e-mail and downloading WhatsApp,” Sheetal said, smiling.
Sheetal is part of the Internet Saathi (partner) initiative, a campaign launched by Google India and Tata Trusts in May to address what is perhaps the biggest gender disparity in India — the fact that only 2 percent of Internet users in rural India are women.
Internet use in India is growing fast. Last year, the country overtook the US to become the second-largest online user base, after China, with 342 million Internet users as of March. Future growth will be largely in rural areas. A Boston Consulting Group study predicts that rural consumers will increase from 120 million last year to almost 315 million in 2020.
The Google campaign, Helping Women Get Online, aims to impart basic Internet skills to rural women in half the country’s villages — about 300,000 — in the next few years.
“Since May, over 1.2 million women have benefited from the program, spread across 40,000 villages,” said Sapna Chadha, head of marketing at Google India.
Through an army of trainers such as Sheetal, rural women learn to use the Internet to improve their lives. Eventually, some may even come to earn a living online. Google provides the gadgets and training, while Tata Trusts uses its links with local non-governmental organizations to identify the online saathis and monitor progress. The Internet carts are available in villages for a minimum of two days every week for four to six months.
The women of Bootoli do not have TVs.
“I saw the prime [Indian] minister for the first time on the tablet. I saw Mecca — my dream — for the first time,” said Naseera Khan, 40, before asking Sheetal to show her pictures of the Taj Mahal.
Khan’s husband and son would not let her touch their handsets. Denying women access to mobile phones is rooted in a conservative culture. Men fear that young girls will start chatting to boys and dating, and that married women will be distracted from housework.
Initially, the men in the village were reluctant to let their wives attend the training sessions, but relented after realizing that it seemed harmless.
“On the training days, we finish our housework quickly and come so that the men can’t complain,” several women said in unison.
Sheetal helps them access the Internet by using their local language and, if they are illiterate, through voice searches on Google or through videos. She has taught them that there is much on the Internet that can help them, such as finding crop prices.
“We’re harvesting onions at the moment and we won’t sell to the middleman until we’ve checked online the price being offered at the wholesale market,” villager Rehana Bano said.
Another woman said she downloads sample exam papers for her children.
“Through this training, we are creating a base for large numbers of rural women to use their new knowledge to earn an income. We are going to add curated content to help them earn a livelihood from their skills,” Tata Trusts project director Prabhat Pani said.
In the neighboring village of Ghatgaon, where women are better educated and men feel less threatened by the training, Internet saathi Mamta Jatav, 28, has a slightly easier time. Some families have smartphones.
The women have learned to search online for information about government benefits, crop prices, health tips, recipes, agricultural techniques, cattle deworming and how to keep animals healthy.
“My husband and I were about to buy a foreign breed of cow because everyone said it would give more milk than an Indian one. I did a search and found that feeding the foreign breed will be far too expensive. I’m glad we didn’t waste our money,” Laxmi Sharma said.
She has ordered a smartphone online that will be delivered to a relative in Alwar, who will bring it on his next visit.
An older woman called Garibi said she learned of government subsidized food schemes that will be useful to her family. Another woman, a widow, said she realized she was entitled to a pension.
“Once they understand the power and value of the Internet, they start saying they can’t do without it. Our hope is to see material change, including a change in men’s attitudes, when they see that families benefit when women learn Internet skills,” Chadha said.
Jatav is still filled with a sense of wonder at her new role.
“I never thought I would ever hold a smartphone in my hands,” she said.
Asked if it was useful, she said: “Yes it is. When I had to go to a hospital in Jaipur, I looked up which train to catch, where it stopped, and where exactly the hospital was located. It made the long journey much easier. In fact, it makes life easier.”.
Saudi Arabian largesse is flooding Egypt’s cultural scene, but the reception is mixed. Some welcome new “cooperation” between two regional powerhouses, while others fear a hostile takeover by Riyadh. In Cairo, historically the cultural capital of the Arab world, Egyptian Minister of Culture Nevine al-Kilany recently hosted Saudi Arabian General Entertainment Authority chairman Turki al-Sheikh. The deep-pocketed al-Sheikh has emerged as a Medici-like patron for Egypt’s cultural elite, courted by Cairo’s top talent to produce a slew of forthcoming films. A new three-way agreement between al-Sheikh, Kilany and United Media Services — a multi-media conglomerate linked to state intelligence that owns much of
The US and other countries should take concrete steps to confront the threats from Beijing to avoid war, US Representative Mario Diaz-Balart said in an interview with Voice of America on March 13. The US should use “every diplomatic economic tool at our disposal to treat China as what it is... to avoid war,” Diaz-Balart said. Giving an example of what the US could do, he said that it has to be more aggressive in its military sales to Taiwan. Actions by cross-party US lawmakers in the past few years such as meeting with Taiwanese officials in Washington and Taipei, and
Denmark’s “one China” policy more and more resembles Beijing’s “one China” principle. At least, this is how things appear. In recent interactions with the Danish state, such as applying for residency permits, a Taiwanese’s nationality would be listed as “China.” That designation occurs for a Taiwanese student coming to Denmark or a Danish citizen arriving in Denmark with, for example, their Taiwanese partner. Details of this were published on Sunday in an article in the Danish daily Berlingske written by Alexander Sjoberg and Tobias Reinwald. The pretext for this new practice is that Denmark does not recognize Taiwan as a state under
The Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan has no official diplomatic allies in the EU. With the exception of the Vatican, it has no official allies in Europe at all. This does not prevent the ROC — Taiwan — from having close relations with EU member states and other European countries. The exact nature of the relationship does bear revisiting, if only to clarify what is a very complicated and sensitive idea, the details of which leave considerable room for misunderstanding, misrepresentation and disagreement. Only this week, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) received members of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations