Review of Next Billion Users
Payal, in her book, "The Next Billion Users: Digital Life Beyond the West" has dismantled some of the commonly held misconceptions about the use of technology by economically marginalized sections of the population. She could be lauded as the counterpart of CK Prahalad, a management thinker and the author of the book "Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid," in the ICTD space. Work of Prahalad revolutionized the fast-moving consumer goods industry by introducing a new lens through which the poor were perceived not as the receivers of philanthropic aid but as active buyers of consumer products. Similarly, Payal's work opens up an unexplored next billion users’ world to tech-giants. Her work is an essential read for all the Californian ideologists suffering from savior complex, policymakers, and researchers exploring ICTD space. From her decades of experience, she portrays how the poor in the global south consume the internet to meet their wants and fulf