- There are many barriers to proper connectivity in Pakistan
By Amna Khan
Access to resources in Pakistan depends heavily upon your region of birth within the country. If you’re born in Punjab or Sindh, congratulations, because you’ve hit the budgeting jackpot. Being born in the three top contenders, Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad indisputably qualifies one for the highest ranking on the resource ladder. In order to assess this basic birthright, one needs the information to know the what, where, how and why of life. Thankfully the un-Islamic Western powers created the World Wide Web so that this basic human right to information could be exercised by the curious masses of the world. They have charitably provided us underwater internet cables so that we could become corrupted by the evil knowledge of the societies progressing around us and raise an online outcry for our Islamic brethren to fight against this menace of downloadable knowledge.
The West further ensured the codification of this right to information. In Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, access to broadband services, more popularly known as ‘the internet’ is declared an inalienable right for all mankind. The Article stipulates that “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media, regardless of frontiers.” As you can fairly foresee Pakistan’s under-performance in this department leads me to address peoples’ right to information on the World Wide Web. The Internet, despite our physical drawbacks is the surest and easiest way to know the world around us. The only question is, does your government allow you the means to go exploring?
Projected figures taken from the Internet World Statistics report for Asia in 2018 state that only 22.2 per cent of the population has access to the internet. This statistic was reframed by the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) as the Internet being an accessible commodity to over 70 million Pakistanis. Sounds groundbreaking doesn’t it? Until you realise that an IMF report in 2018 stated that over 200 million Pakistanis don’t even know what the internet is– let alone have the ability to use it. Pakistan is also the top fourth country in the world with unaffordable or inaccessible Internet. This is disheartening to say the least, for not only is uniform Internet access the precursor of a fledgling economy but it is also the central factor in a functional democracy. Furthermore, Al Jazeera, while covering the media blackout in Kashmir, reveals figures from 2016 – 2018 listing ‘countries with the most Internet shutdowns’ in which Pakistan follows proudly behind India as second in conducting premeditated media blackouts. It soothes the soul to know that if Kashmir does eventually join with Pakistan, we will do our utmost to make them feel right at home.
A uniform Internet connection is a necessary precursor in establishing a relationship with the contemporary world for human beings to reach their full potential. It will allow us to reclaim our narrative via uploading it for the world to see
We live in an age when digital citizenship shapes our history and place in this world. It is inexcusable that digital literacy remains an underutilised phenomenon within the country. Improving the human condition through technology should be viewed as an advancement of rights, not as a way to keep people uninformed to avoid democratic oversight. The Internet is an essential resource for today’s world and there is simply no identity formulation without it. When we protest the media black-outs in Kashmir, do we consider the deliberate Internet blackout for the 77.8 per cent of Pakistanis? Perhaps because they’re not situated on top of our water channels, there’s no reason for them to have an opinion which needs to be expressed.
When born in Pakistan, civil and human rights are a luxury that you have to be born into. Digital citizenship requires not only access but digital literacy and skills allow us to effectively use the Internet. The gaps of Internet access unsurprisingly are between rural to urban settlements and women– who are prone to corruption via worldly information (or so the religious fanatics say). Why should be a legal, social and cultural right ensured by our taxes, be used to keep the less fortunate in the dark and unaware, thus condemning the very government who condemn its own citizens to a sub human existence? It’s easier to sell falsehoods to people who are in the dark. This systemic injustice is amplified in broadcast media, which chooses to dominate airwaves not through superior programming but through vindictive monopolisation. Whenever educated minds emerge in the media space with reformations and solutions via educated programming, producers blame an uneducated audience as the main culprit behind inferior programming. What producers hide is that the most cost-effective way to win at this media game is to not let the audience find out there are other better players out there and misleading those who are ignored to stay ignorant.
However better players not only exist but are the only ones who truly thrive in today’s world. Netflix and Amazon Prime have just recently launched discounted mobile plans especially for their market in India to facilitate their users. The government had already laid the foundations for the infrastructure to support such endeavours. The country has been rewarded with offices, investment and employment opportunities from Netflix and Amazon to complement their commitment at universalising their narratives to fit the world. A narrative which the world wouldn’t have known if it wasn’t for equitable internet speeds and an educated audience who knows how to use it! Author of Media Policy and Globalization Paula Chakravartty concludes her book by saying that, “The three pillars for the construction of information societies are not telecommunications, equipment and software, rather info-ethics, digital education and real and effective citizen participation.” Ergo Pakistan, in order to meet the criteria of being an ‘information society’, direly needs to invest in the future the world is headed towards.
The PTA frees itself from blame by stating that the overhead costs of improving Internet quality and stretching cables to accommodate obscure areas, are too high. However, the extravagant costs of collecting our taxes to ensure these very provisions remain feasibly low. Contacting China for 5G services is also implausible because it would require a replacement of Western-installed Internet wiring with Chinese cables. The impracticality and unaffordability of this endeavour isn’t even the central drawback. It’s the risk of becoming the next cyberwar zone between capitalism and communism, constantly hacked into our Internet ecosystem! A boon such as the Internet is an inescapable phenomenon that we have to live with, and not being able to access it is the real bane. Inefficiency of Internet services holds a country back economically, socially and narratively. If we can’t import knowledge, ideas and innovations from other developed countries, how are we going to remedy our own? Or even export a believable enough narrative to make our case for ourselves? As declared by the UN, a uniform Internet connection is a necessary precursor in establishing a relationship with the contemporary world for human beings to reach their full potential. It will allow us to reclaim our narrative via uploading it for the world to see.
