An excessive emphasis on information technology holds the danger of diverting resources away from the basic economy, which is the very foundation for IT to take off. The lack of a judicious balance in this area can prove disastrous for India.

:: Sitaram Yechury is a Polit Bureau member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). This is an amended version of a paper presented at the IT 2000 Kerala International Seminar, "Crafting a Knowledge Society in the 21st Century", November 23-25, at Techno park, Thiruvananthapuram. ::

EXTENDING one of Karl Marx's famous and oft-quoted out of context statements that "the hand mill gives you society with the feudal lord and the steam mill gives you society with the industrial capitalist", one commentator, noting the epochal shifts under globalisation, added that "the microchip gives you society with the global capitalist". 1 Undoubtedly, the revolutionary advances in information technology (IT) have transformed the world. But it would be erroneous to conclude that these technologies are in any way creating a situation (like the transition from the hand mill to t he steam mill) that would provide any reprieve from the intensifying degree of exploitation under capitalism. These advances by themselves are the result of the internal dynamics of the capitalist system. By saying so, one does not in any way seek to und ermine the scientific advances in this field as a mere corollary of capitalist development. Neither does one seek to negate the possibilities that these advances open up for the democratic forces to advance their struggles. For, after all, knowledge and information do have their liberation potential. However, the concrete manifestation of these possibilities in any given actuality depends on the struggle between contending forces at the ground level.

In the very process of development, capitalism creates the internationalisation and concentration of capital on vast scales. These developments, in turn, require speedier communication and massive levels of information in order to allow capital to conduc t its global operations. The development of capitalism to this stage of a highly concentrated internationalisation of capital which is globally mobile required a highly developed information and communication network. There is thus a dialectical linkage between the development of capitalism and the present-day scientific advances of the IT revolution.

The present-day rapid strides in information, communication and entertainment (ICE) technology have created an enormously large global industry. The convergence of these technologies, as someone commented, is more "fiscal than digital". 2 The present-day emergence of giant corporations in the entertainment and information industries reminds us of what Karl Marx had said nearly 150 years ago: "Production not only provides the material to satisfy a need, but it also provides th e need for the material. When consumption emerges from its original primitive crudeness and immediacy - and its remaining in that state would be due to the fact that production was still primitively crude - then it is itself a desire brought about by the object. The need felt for the object is induced by the perception of the object. An objet d'art creates a public that has artistic taste and is able to enjoy beauty - and the same can be said of any other product. Production accordingly produces not only an object for the subject, but also a subject for the object."3

The entire raison d'etre of the advertisement industry today had not only been anticipated long long back, but predicted as being a consequence of the internal dynamics of capitalist development. The present-day information technology revolution, apart from its impact on vast areas of human activity, has three aspects that we wish to take up here. The first is a narrow one as an industry; the second, its impact on society in terms of social and e conomic inequalities; and finally, its impact on the quality of life.