06-02-2013, 03:39 PM
Bridging digital divide: Efforts in India
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Abstract
The fruits of Information Technology sector such as the Internet blue chips, online shopping
and nanosecond email have failed to cure century-old malaises like illiteracy, poverty and
unemployment in India. The paper presents few facts about digital divide based on global and
the USA perspective, its definition and types as global, regional and national, and societal
implications. It highlights India in the context of digital divide by discussing its infrastructural
bottleneck that includes electricity, IT penetration, teledensity and Internet industry, and its
enabling policies to transform India as a knowledge society. It discusses various technology
options for connectivity, viz. terrestrial wireless, satellite, wireline, etc. and presents snap shots
of select successful projects that made an impact in helping to bridge digital divide in India,
viz. passenger reservation system, Akashganga, Akshaya e-centres, Bhoomi, etc. It concludes
that creation of Information and Communication Technologies infrastructure and content are
the core methodologies, and a national agenda on a C-8 thrust towards: connectivity provision,
content creation, capacity augmentation, core technologies creation and exploitation,
cost reduction, competence building, community participation and commitment to the
deprived and disadvantaged would definitely help in bridging digital divide.
Introduction
India worries about the rapid strides being made in Information Technology (IT)
that is fueling to widen gap between the countrys privileged urban population and
its under privileged rural populace, where as the rest of world is worried about the
slowdown of economy in the United States of America (USA), e-commerce, portals
and cyber money. Though, the windfall of venture capital fund supported to increase
the number of Internet users, the trickle down effect, notwithstanding a few villages
that now do their accounts on computers, has been non-existent. The fruits of IT
sector yielded results only to most developed and computerized economies. On the
other hand, the Internet blue chips, online shopping and nanosecond email have
failed to cure century-old malaises, viz. illiteracy, poverty and unemployment in
India. Also, in India, digital divide is not restricted to less developed states (Bihar,
Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Orissa) with traditionally weak infrastructure but also
to new IT states (Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh). The objective of the
paper is to present few facts about digital divide based on global and the USA
perspective, its definition and types, societal implications including reasons in India
and Indias efforts in bridging digital divide through governmental policies and
implementation of several projects.
Facts about digital divide
The Internet users account for only 6% of worlds population and out of that 85%
of them are in developed countries where 90% of all Internet hosts are located. This
is the essence of global digital divide that needs to be transformed into global digital
opportunity. For the Internet to be a true mass medium, it will have to achieve harmony
among all consumer segments. There are different dimensions to digital divide
such as economic level of individuals, economic prosperity of nations, ethnicity, age
(young/old), rural/urban, gender, geographic location, quantitative and qualitative
aspects, dial-up and broadband access.
The facts about digital divide based on global perspective reveals an estimated 429
million people are online globally (represents 6% of world population) and out of
that, percentage wise, 41 in North America (USA and Canada), 27 in Europe, the
Middle East and Africa and 20 in Asia Pacific. Even among highly developed nations,
there exists a vast difference in the availability of home Internet access. Sweden
ranks the highest (61%) home Internet connections where as Spain has lowest (20%)
homes connected. Also, 57% of those not online in the USA have no intention of
going online; worldwide, this figure accounts to 33% (Benton Foundation, 2002).
Societal implications of digital divide
The digital divide has severe implications on the society, if not addressed properly.
The factors that have influence in addressing digital divide include:
(i) Computer literacy: Those who can operate computers stand a better chance
than those who cannot, though literate and otherwise competent, to get even
a secretarial job let alone an administrative one.
(ii) Use of electronic data interchange (EDI): An export company from a country
that cannot use e-commerce over the Internet, may lose a large export order
to another company from a different country that has collected more information
through the Internet and submitted quotations through EDI. Singapore
has announced that it will not trade with any company that cannot transact
with it in paperless EDI mode over a computer network. If many other countries
follow the suite, it results in a Global digital divide. As a consequence,
exports may grind to a halt for a country just because its companies cannot
transact in EDI over a network.
(iii) Tech savvy operations: Those who know how to operate automated teller
machine can draw money faster and those who cannot operate need to spend
more time at manual counters.
Teledensity
Despite ongoing deregulation of Indias telecommunications sector, its national
teledensity is one of the lowest in the world, improving slowly from 0.06% (1990),
2.86 (2000), 3.58 (2001) and 5 (2003). The rural and urban teledensities were 0.93
and 10.16 (2001) and 1.49 and 15.16 (2003), respectively. Indias new telecom policy
of 1999 seeks to increase telephone penetration to 7% (75 million telephone connections)
by 2005 and to 15% (175 million connections) by 2010. It encourages development
of telecoms in rural areas to increase teledensity from the current level of 1.49%
(2003) to 4% by 2010 (India Telecom News, 2003a). According to Morgan Stanley,
over the next 5 years 55% of countrys Internet subscriber additions will be from global
system for mobile communications segment, 29% from code division multiple access
based wireless in local loop (WLL) services (WLL-CDMA) and 16% from
wireline segment. By 2007, India will have 19 million WLL subscribers, 47.5 million
global system for mobile communications (GSM) subscribers and 51.1 million
wireline subscribers (Chatterjee, 2003).
Bridging digital divide
World over, the view is that large-scale, national-level planning is needed to
bridge digital divide and also to reap digital dividend. It is quite interesting to note
that the time taken to reach 50 million people world over, by radio is 40 years, TV is
16 years, PC is 12 years, where as the Internet is only 5 years. The Internet acts like
an integrator (due to its transcended national boundaries and influences cross border
flow of education, health and trade services) and divider (due to its disparities in access).
The digital divide becomes more important because the Internet is not only a
communication medium, but also a market place. The Internet gives value to the customer,
enhances profit for producer and eliminates middlemen. The Internet is continue
to become more popular and at present turned into an economic activity. The
five areas that need to be given priority for bridging digital divide and converting in
to digital dividends are distance education, telemedicine, job matching, local development
and market reach.
Conclusion
The digital divide can never be contained in isolation but the effort has to be
multi-dimensional and multi-pronged. ICTs are one of the enabling tools to bridge
digital divide. Creation of ICT infrastructure and content are core methodologies
and a thrust to technology growth in a planned manner will certainly lessen the
gap. While digital divide is an issue of recent concern, technology divide has been
as issue for much longer. There are two approaches to enable a wider population
to benefit from technology and information revolutions; one is to enhance level of
literacy (basic, functional technology and computer education amongst masses)
and another is to design appropriate IT tools around the capabilities of users (such
as Simputer (http://www.simputer) that employs audio/visual input/output,
without need to be literate; low cost telephony and data communication—VOIP
and wireless communication like WiFi and CorDECT). A national agenda on a
C-8 thrust towards: connectivity provision, content creation, capacity augmentation,
core technologies creation and exploitation, cost reduction, competence building,
community participation and commitment to deprived and disadvantaged would
definitely help in bridging digital divide.