Presentation at the National Seminar on Culture, Communication and India's Development at School of Social Sciences, University of Hyderabad, 27-29 August 2019

1. Clash of cultures? Development &
Digital Media in Asian Societies
Mira K Desai
Professor & Head
Department of Extension Education
SNDT Women’s University
Juhu Campus, Mumbai

2. Material Aspects of Culture
Artifacts Food

3. Culture also is………..
Verbal
Non-verbal
Symbolic codes
Beliefs Attitudes
Ethos

4. What is Development?
Gross National
Product
IdeologyTechnology
Change
Reality

5. Development Perspectives
• Economic Growth: GNP, GDP, Per Capita
Income
• Quality of Life: PQLI (IMR, Death rate, Life
Expectancy, Literacy Rate)
• Distribution: Social-Economic-Political-
Technological- Gender Equality
• Liberation from Dependency & Exploitation:
Human Rights and Social Justice

6. What is Communication?
Ideology
Technology Process

7. Communication means…….
Understanding
Acknowledgement
Respect
SensitivityTRUST

8. Oral Modes
• Dramatic
• Episodic
• Mosaic
• Dynamic
• Active
• Concrete
• Ephemeral
• Social
• Metaphorical
• Rhetorical
• Dialectical
Literate Modes
• Narrative
• Sequential
• Linear
• Static
• Artifact
• Abstract
• Permanent
• Individual
• Metonymic
• Logical
• Univocal ‘constituent’

9. Centric-ness in Development
• P.C. Joshi (1986) “The disjunction between culture
and political economy, values and interests, has
emerged as a fundamental disorienting and
destabilising force in India in the recent period.
• Agrawal (1996) “analysis of contemporary ‘political
economy’ of communication technology, and related
software provides some concrete clues as to how the
“whites” living in the Euro-American countries are able
to have communication domination over the “non-
whites” of Afro-Asian countries.
• Agrawal (2000: 297) “In India, little distinction has
been considered essential between culture and
communications while discussing development”.

10. Recent Evidences
• Schroeder R (2017) “new divides are emerging
between more active and variegated as against more
passive and restricted media uses”.
• Moses (2018) evaluates performance of three years,
“The focus and priorities of “Digital India” need to
be aligned with the larger rural population, while a
clear roadmap with execution discipline from the
center and state government will give a much-
needed reboot for the program”.
• Desai (2019) concludes that the life in the ‘third’
world is still ‘physical’. Life in most Asian societies
have created disconnect between micro and macro.

11. ‘Digital’ in Asian Societies
• Two words & worlds……
• Standardization versus diversity
• Algorithms
• People as numbers
• Privacy and transparency
• Wellbeing and representation

12. Conclusions
• Development in present times is merging
with technologies- Human Face!
• Communication is inevitably becoming one
with technologies- Connectivity!
• Culture is not being part of the triangle of
development-communication-technologies-
But Clash is still to be empirically
confirmed.

13. Thank you for your
Time and Attention
drmiradesai@gmail.com
extensionedu@sndt.ac.in