ONLINE AND OFFLINE
STRATEGIES IN INDIA

Working with new media in the Part of South Asia that | come from is something like crossing a tightrope on a bicycle, The
bicycle which could have helped me along were | on my way on flat ground makes the Crossing that much more precari-
ous. Consider the bicycle to be the single computer and the internet Connection which | use along with at least seventeen
other people, friends, colleagues, neighbours and complete strangers. An infinitesimal fraction of the South Asian popula-
tion has access to internet, and this is likely to be the case in the future even at the most optimistic projection. Computers
are few and when we get them, we tend to spread them thin by sharing them out. Computers, modems, internet accounts -
these are expensive things and a lot of people Sharing the costs, and the Phone bill makes sense in a context where the
rent, the absence of any form of social security, and the price of vegetables and the lack of work are important concerns.
This means that not everyone gets the luxury of privacy, or unfettered usage. It makes for a crowded bicycle, but as we say
often in other crowded situations, in trains, buses or even in living spaces : ‘never mind, we'll adjust’ The tightrope is made
Up of three intertwined strands : the failing electricity Supply, the soggy and overloaded telephone line and the server that
Crashes every other day. | am never quite sure if the message that | typed and sent actually reached it's destination until |
get a reply. The sent-mail box in my e mail may be full, but that doesn't really mean anything. | might have just got into my
favourite anarchist archive on the het, but a little click sound will tell me that the system crashed again, for the twentieth
time within half an hour. Surfing the web in New Delhi is a lot more like trying to climb up a slippery mountain face that
never lets you get to the next foothold.

And yet India is amongst the highest exporters of software professionals in the world. Large multinational corporations in
London, Brussels and Chicago tap into India's growing labour market of cheap, skilled, anglophone, software profession-
als via dedicated internet lines every working day. While they sleep each night, half the world away, in another timezone,
somewhere in New Delhi, or Bangalore or Hyderabad, feports are typed, spreadsheets drawn up, software created, graph-
ics designed in a virtual sweatshop by workers seated in assembly lines glued to keyboards and screens. Fifty people get
laid off in one place, another five Sweatshops open their virtual windows in another, The sweatshops have their own elec-
tricity generator, leased phone lines and dedicated internet Connections that don't collapse every five minutes. The grease
of the global digitized workplace makes sure that everything runs smoothly, that deadlines are stuck to, and that the
modems hum in tune with the music of production schedules.

My fragile internet Connection, riding on pirated software (the only kind | can afford, on an assembled computer that was
made in an anonymous ‘grey market’ workshop) beeps and crackles along side the drone of a giant economic engine as it
Cavorts on a new virtual playground. Can my beep and crackle, and the beep and crackle of others like me challenge the
digital drone of power?

My reasons for hope in this regard, few though they are are based partially on the fact that South Asian cultures have

shown a remarkably high ability to absorb new expressive and communicative technologies and and transform them in

keeping with local needs. If you look at the rapid ways in which the Printing press, the cinema and photography spread in

South Asia, giving rise to new and varied expressive forms, and new constellations of audiences and performers, then per-

haps there is some hope for a yet-to-emerge internet and new media culture. But this new media culture will depend cru-

Cially on the way in which it's protagonists shape their space, and the content of their work, vis a vis existing communi-

cation structures, both hegemonic and otherwise.

But before we go on, | want to briefly examine what | consider to be a missed opportunity. A case of the forgotten ‘old’

WF AH HOW OW OW WoO th eh et et ot