Evidence available after the devastating April 2015 Nepal earthquake (Gorkha earthquake) illustrate uneven coverage and poor data consumption in Nepal in spite of impressive mobile Internet subscription numbers. Places with favourable terrain, higher population densities, and higher income have better connectivity. Online activity levels, on the other hand, do not always correspond with these factors. Overall, ownership of digital technologies and its use exhibit clear regional unevenness and a large urban-rural inequality. These geographical factors reflect differences in socio-demographic characteristics. Unfortunately, in Nepal, dominant discourses on the Internet brush aside these linkages. With deep structural inequalities, a resource-scarce economy, and a track record of poor governance, broadband connectivity will not reduce this development chasm. This paper calls for Nepali Internet discourses to be grounded in reality, detaching from a ‘self-evident’ development vision of connectivity.

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Nepali information and communication technology (ICT) policies, informed by dominant international discourses on internet and ICT for development, have attributed a ‘self-evident’ positive impact to economic growth. Such a conception is inconclusive and hides the underlying socioeconomic inequalities and the barriers they oppose to universal connectivity ambitions. The self-evident discourse overlooks the importance of adjacent infrastructures like electricity, critical for efficient functioning of a ‘digital society’. History has shown Nepal’s eagerness to buy the irrational exuberance of the dot-com era. It also shows policy targets were not based on local evidence and experiences. While the question about when the next bubble will emerge and burst is debatable, the techno-deterministic arguments need to be checked in light of evidence. We offer insights from import trajectories since the drafting of the first IT policy. The proliferation of mobile phones is explored in light of data consumption (i.e., usage) and access during the deadly earthquake in 2015. The evidence clearly highlights the mismatch between connectivity ambitions and socioeconomic realities in a stratified information society. We contend that the self-evident visions of connectivity need to be checked empirically. We call for internet and ICT policies that have a nuanced conceptualisation of access and its gradation.