How IT can change India

Can information technology bridge the digital divide in India by percolating down to the grassroots? It already is—but through minuscule pulls and pushes, not the major makeover that the country needs. And that is not because India lacks binary talent.
Paranjoy Guha Thakurta

Can information technology (IT) really change the lives of the economically underprivileged? The answer clearly is, “Yes.” But there is a more important question: How can the digital divide in India be bridged? Will it happen over the next decade? Or will it take till midcentury? Even as the “cyber coolies” of yesteryear claim that they have become tomorrow’s “knowledge workers” and creators of intellectual capital, there is little or no indication that the yawning gap between digital haves and have-nots might narrow substantially.

It has become a cliché to characterise India as a country of contradictions. We entered the New Millennium with nearly one-third of the world’s computer software engineers—and a quarter of the world’s undernourished. While there are 12 phones and 10 television sets for every 100 Indians, the total number of personal computers in the country is less than two per cent of its population of over a billion.

Not more than six per cent of the Indian population has used the internet once, although the number of users is likely to double every two years over the next decade. Whereas exports of computer software have grown—and are expected to continue to do so—by around 30 per cent annually, and could comprise one-third of India’s total exports a few years from now, the share of the IT sector in the country’s gross domestic product is less than two per cent. According to a very optimistic projection, the share of this sector in India’s GDP could rise to 10 per cent towards the end of the decade.

Consider the much talked-about telecommunications revolution that has swept the country. The number of mobile telephones in India has doubled over the past two years, crossing the 100 million mark in June. The government has claimed that this number could exceed 250 million over the next two years. Whereas mobile, long-distance and international phone calls in India were perhaps the most expensive in the world until as recently as 1994, call rates are, at present, the lowest in the world.

But against more than four phones for every 10 citizens in cities like Delhi and Mumbai—in Chennai, it is six out of 10—there are states such as Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Orissa and Assam where there are less than two phones for every 100 individuals. The distribution of phones is heavily skewed towards urban areas. Teledensity in rural India is barely two per cent. Out of the 600,000-odd villages in India, nearly 50,000 still do not have a single telephone. At any given time, between a fourth to a third of the phones in villages are not in order.

One is not arguing that IT cannot improve the lives of ordinary people in this country. At one level, computerisation is perceived to be displacing labour when large numbers are unemployed or under-employed. At another, IT can potentially improve the quality of governance by enhancing personal productivity and by making the system of administration more transparent and less discretionary.

Digitisation of land records has the potential to change power equations at the village level. Thanks to IT, patients in Kerala’s remote areas are able to obtain specialised medical advice from qualified doctors based in city hospitals. From more accurate weather forecasts, information about cultivation techniques and irrigation practices to direct information on prices of agricultural products in different markets, IT can change the lot of ordinary farmers.

A group of young students of computer science from Gandhinagar is working on the development of software that mimics echo-location, used by bats. The software seeks to assist blind people “see” objects, emitting ultrasonic impulses generated by proximity sensors that are processed into sound frequencies and conveyed in realtime through a mobile device to headphones. Microsoft founder Bill Gates remarked, “I have never seen something like this.”

India’s computer scientists have the talents and the capabilities to change the world. But how soon can they change their own country? That is a rather difficult question to answer.