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 fulfill their aspirations in a manner that is very much similar to their northern elites. Simultaneously, she also discusses the apathy of the online content producers and interface designers towards the poor, which in turn pushes the poor users to jugaad (a flexible approach to problem-solving that uses limited resources in an innovative way) the system. Under most circumstances, poor consumers feel that it is their right to jugaad internet space to get the maximum benefit out of it because they spend a higher percentage of their income on the internet than their upper-class peers. 

Payal, through her rigorous ethnography, has skillfully collected a wide spectrum of information, enriching every chapter of the book. She takes us through the lives of people in the global south to show how much they value privacy and the importance of their privacy concerns. Further, she talks about the culturally loaded details such as mutual sharing of profile passwords among teenage lovers to prove their purity and express trust they have on each other. Also, her bold critical analysis of the popular Sugata Mitra's “hole in the wall experiment” throws light on the methodological flaws in the experiment and the vested interest behind the parasitic billion dollar industry that is setting the ground to thrive on the poor. 

While the governments, as well as the citizens in most parts of the global south, are going bonkers over innovation in recent times, she cautions them about the limited innovation absorption capacity of society. She brings out in her work the catch 22 concept called Collingridge dilemma which at the least policymakers must undergo, but hardly does. In the words of Payal, “It is also worth keeping in mind the “Collingridge dilemma”: We cannot predict the social consequences of a technology until it plays out in its entirety. By the time the negative aspects surface, these technologies have been absorbed into the system…. However, technology should be peripheral to the social system it aims to transform. Innovation does not automatically reduce inequality. That assumption is clearly a myth. Experiments by their very nature privilege one group over another.”

Payal, at the end of every chapter, shoots thought-provoking questions about re-working the existing social order and strengthening the institutional capacity on hungry intellectuals trying to address techno-social challenges. The book concludes with a request to break the emerging oligarchies that are dominating digital platforms with their commercial algorithms. Through her intriguing piece of writing, she has built a legit case for an approach transformation: from our existing piece-meal instrumental approach of tech design to a holistic humane approach of perceiving the digital life of the global poor. 

Of the many yellow highlights in my book, the one quote from the book which still resonates in my mind is, "Criminalization is legitimate only when there is genuine choice." However, one limiting factor with her work is that it focussed mainly on apps such as Whatsapp, Facebook, and YouTube while a number of apps such as Tik Tok, share chat, and Likee have a wide variety of vernacular content. Such apps have penetrated into the personal lives of people and have disrupted it in multiple ways. Looking forward to Payal's analysis of such recently used apps and their impact on society in her future work. Hope this review kindled your interest in Payal’s work. If so, do add Payal’s work in your 'To Read Bucket.' Happy reading!