The Internet in India: Miles to go

R. Ramaraj

Many people believe that the Internet is not relevant to them, or worse, that it is dead. That it died along with the hundreds of dotcoms that perished without a viable business model. Nothing could be further from the truth.

What is the Internet? A global interconnection of networks enabling one to access any person, content or service that has an online presence or address. A medium that can carry data, content, voice or video, depending on the bandwidth available, enabling flexibility of use, diverse applications and services. The more utilitarian these are, the more it will be used.

But the Internet isn’t just about email, messaging and chat. It is the single biggest opportunity India has had to build dominance in the delivery of online services worldwide. By leveraging India’s advantage in knowledge resources. IT enabled services are growing at a rate of 65-70 per cent per annum and is expected to earn Rs 7,100 crores in 2001-02. And, it will continue to grow at this rate for the next three years, creating a million new jobs, as per the Nasscom-McKinsey study.

The key to expanding this business opportunity for the country lies in making the Internet ubiquitous and affordable to all. For the rapid adoption of the Net as a business and personal enhancement tool, with a rapid learning curve resulting in many more companies investing in IT enabled services. Then the Internet will truly become a tool for giving India a competitive edge in global eCommerce.

Indian citizens will use the Internet for the benefits it affords them in daily life as more services come online. These need not be for the urban, sophisticated users alone. In a village near Pondicherry, a volunteer uses an Internet link-up to read weather forecasts and broadcasts them over a loudspeaker. For the fishermen who go out every day on frail wooden boats, knowing that a storm is approaching can mean the difference between life and death. They can now even download satellite images revealing where fish shoals are. The Internet also tells them the prevailing market price that day for their catch, helping them get better terms with bulk buyers.

In the Gyandoot project of Dhar district, Madhya Pradesh (http://gyandoot.nic.in/), a collection of tele-kiosks run by local operators offer e-government services to citizens. The grievance system, a facility for citizens to lodge complaints against the government with a guaranteed response within one week, was one of the most popular information services of the program. (The most sought after information were market prices and job availability.)

Making the Internet available as a knowledge resource to every Indian does not mean trying to provide broadband access to every village. Instead, providing a farmer with access to land records online is a tangible benefit: the Andhra Pradesh government is attempting to do just that. So the Internet needs to be made available to rural communities with content that is relevant and useful to them. With technologies and business models that work in their societal setting.

The governments of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh are investing in networking their states to make eGovernance a reality for their citizens. Their plans also include providing connectivity to decentralise the location of businesses in IT enabled services and Business Process Outsourcing from the capital cities to a network of satellite towns. So the economic benefits of eCommerce can be dispersed across the state.

But there’s much more to be done before it becomes as ubiquitous and affordable as, say electricity, today. We need government policies that encourage investment in infrastructure, free and fair competition, the growth of eGovernance and IT enabled services. High capacity bandwidth, both national and international, new technologies for the last mile, community access centres in rural areas like cyber cafes all need to be made available. So we have miles to go, but the good news is that we have made a beginning and are on our way.