Societies are categorized as agrarian, industrial, and post-industrial/information societies depending on the mode of production. The information society is the latest phase of social development where knowledge/information works or service works dominate and manufacturing works decline.

Some mainstream American social theorists including Daniel Bell came up with the idea of information society in 1970s. Reviewing the employment trend in the US, they declared that the country moved from an industrial society to a post-industrial or information society because service or knowledge works made the largest contribution to the GDP.

From their point of view, service or knowledge works include everything from hair dressing to medical care, which is based on mental labour. Knowledge/service workers do brain work while manufacturing workers do muscle or manual work. In the information society information work is more valuable than manufacturing work. Such a society is built on information or computer technologies. Information technologies are the engines of progress and growth in such societies.

This information society theorization is faulty for many reasons. First, it is difficult to divide works into manual and mental categories because every work involves some mental and manual labour, albeit in different proportions.

Second, information society theorists do not say that dirty manufacturing works have been exported to developing countries, increasing the concentration of service works in the US.

Third, this theory involves a technological determinism which suggests that technology, particularly information technology, determines the nature of society. Such determinism is dangerous because it undermines the role of policy and political economy in shaping a society.

Fourth, it does not say that automation through computerization creates a large pool of unemployed workers. One can go on and on by critiquing the theoretical foundation of the information society idea.

In spite of its weak theoretical foundation it has become the new utopia for the global community. The Japanese adopted the idea and introduced massive computerization immediately after the Americans and created a Japanese model of the information society. The Europeans followed suit and have been in the process of developing an EU version for the last few years.

Finally the UN made it a global utopia. Building information societies across the globe is a UN goal for the new millennium. The UN formalized this goal at a summit called the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) which took place in two phases -- the first phase was held in Geneva in 2003 and the final phase was in Tunis in 2005.

Multinational corporations which own, produce and market information technologies widely publicized this idea. The statesmen in the developed world adopted it because their societies already reached the limit of industrialization and became stagnant in terms of social progress. They needed something to revitalize their communities. The information society became a new utopia for them.

You must be wondering where we are in terms of the information society. Officially we are onboard with other countries. Our Prime Minister led a huge delegation to the Geneva phase of the WSIS and another huge delegation attended the Tunis phase. At the summit Bangladesh along with other countries committed to take initiatives to build the information society. Bangladeshi delegation begged the developed world to help poor countries develop information technologies.

However, if a country like Bangladesh wants to turn into an information society, it has to leapfrog a complete phase in the process of social progress. It has to become a post-industrial or information society from an agrarian or pre-industrial society.

It is not impossible but it is an arduous task. It requires an immediate assessment of our reality. Do we have the infrastructure to be an information society? Do we have skilled manpower to create and reap the benefits of the information society? Do we have enough resources to afford information technologies?

Unfortunately, the answer to all these questions is no. Even there is no sign of moving ahead in this direction. We are yet to take the necessary steps to educate our children in information technologies. We are yet to equip our educational institutions with such technologies. We don't have any viable plan to be self-reliant in terms of them. We lack a foundational element of the information society -- enough electricity to run computers.

We feel it every time when we sweat and wait in darkness because of frequent power outages. We feel it when the power supply fails in the middle of typing an e-mail. The people of Kansat exposed this hard truth at a cost of few lives. They embraced bullets and bathed in blood, demanding electricity.

The ruling coalition promised to take us forward. They pledged to produce enough electricity and take us closer to the information society, but they failed. Kansat tells us that story --the story of failures and broken promises. It demonstrates how far we are from the information society. It is a surrogate for the whole Bangladesh.

Dialectical thinking suggests that any sadness accompanies some hope. So, what are the elements of hope in Kansat? You may disagree with me, but I would ask you to celebrate Kansat as a story of popular resistance. Kansat reestablishes an old maxim that bullets can never muffle people. People are ready to bite the bullet to resist repressions.

Poverty, police brutality, guns and goons can never eliminate people's desire to have a better life. And this is the space of hope for progressive and alternative politics. You need an honest leadership and a vision for the future. People will follow. Salute to the people of Kansat for reminding us this important lesson.

AJM Shafiul Alam Bhuiyan is a faculty (on leave) at the Department of Mass Communication and Journalism at the University of Dhaka and is pursuing a Ph. D. in Communication at Simon Fraser University, Canada.