Two years back I wrote two articles on telecentre movement, Birth of BTN and Trend & Trade of Telecenre Movement, where I showed wrong way and fallacy of ICT4D. The both articles were appreciated not only in Bangladesh, even I got kind responses from British, French and American ICT thinkers. However, some local development activists attacked my analysis; most of them even didn’t read my full articles and failed to grip the essence of my write-ups.
BTN was started during the last military backed government. They made a controversial man its chairman, later he was replaced. By 2011 they promised to make 40,000 telecentres across the country. So now, 1 year before 2011, they are supposed to set up about 30,000 telecentres. But now we are not observing its any significant activity. Some members of it told me they are not interested to continue its membership because it is just blessing a few people who only want a platform. We also found a BTN pioneer was focused by attacks with some allegations. Huge spam mails were sent.
I should not be proud that my assumption and analysis were right. I made the analysis two years back to tell ICT4D people to take right track and work in favor of people, and avoid exaggerations. Now many telecentres are stopped and suffering. It can be a nice subject in another article of mine why ICT4D are not functioning well. Why are they becoming incorporated with multinational companies, working under the corporate social responsibility programs? Why are they active in only agreement signing with some profit hungry companies?
Best wishes,
Shahidul K K Shuvra
01715245459