[Reader-list] "India's New Mantra!"

[Monica Narula]

Sent to Sarai by Patrice Riemens:

An article with the playful title "India's New Mantra: The
Internet" appeared in the April 2001 issue of Current
History, continuing their review of Internet penetration and
its social impacts around the world.

The overweening topic in the article, of course, was the
barriors set up by poverty and backward infrastructure. I
probably don't need to bore you with the statistics, but
here are just a few:

* On low penetration: "the Internet reaches less than 0.37
   percent of India's citizens."

* On costs: "it costs $700 to install a single telephone
   line in India, making it prohibitive for more than 3
   percent of the population to afford telephone lines."
   (Currently, 2.2 percent do.)

* On the geographic digital divide: "although by August 2000
   there were 1.6 million subscribers and 4.8 million users,
   77 percent were from the federal captiral New delhi and
   the state capitals."

* On comparisons with nearby countries: in India, an
   impressive "35 million subscribers and 100 million users
   are expected by March 2008," but "Such growth is by no
   means unusual if you look at other countries (such as
   China, Taiwan, Singapore, and Japan)." Therefore, "India
   has a marathon course to run."

* On literacy and language barriers: "61 percent of females
   and 36 percent of males age seven above" are "unable to
   read and write" in any language. English is "spoken only
   by between 2 and 3 percent of India's population." Many
   Indian languages "still need standardization in terms of
   fonts, keyborads, and software for effective Internet
   use."

But governments are trying hard to change this pattern: not
only the national government, but several states. Andhra
Pradesh has received international attention for trying to
promote Internet penetration, education, and use; other such
states include Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala.

Those who call on the market to do everything should take
note that Internet use in India began, as it did in the
United States, as a government project. The federal
government installed a network for educational and research
institutions, encouraged a private consortium called the
Software Technology Parks of India to provide low-cost
services, and linked government departments together. But
the effects were limited; they created islands of Internet
use in a country of completely unconnected individuals.

Indeed, the article repeats the standard free-market
criticisms frequently made of government industrial policy
in India, and of telecom in particular, calling its policy
"rigid and unimaginative."  The article praises deregulation
of telecom, and complains about continuing barriers put up
by the government-run Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited telephone
company (including their famous ban on the use of the
Internet to place telephone calls). Only in 1999 were
independent ISPs allowed to set up gateways for
international Internet traffic.

But the solutions presented in the article are still not
entirely reliant on the free market. It praises the
government for "an innovative scheme of setting up public
phone offices in rural areas" and calls for intervention to
improve the computer hardware industry. It praises states
for putting government information online, and for promoting
material in local languages. (It also calls for graphic
content that can be accessed by the illiterate.)

For the future, the article sees potential along two
divergent paths: one private and the other
community-based. The first involves putting set-top boxes in
the houses of people with cable TV (there are 37 million
households subscribing). The second rests on the village
telephone offices mentioned in the previous paragraph,
turning them "into information kiosks that could provide a
range of single-window services such as local and
international telephony, Internet access, faxing, and even
photocopying."

A good deal of the article is devoted to the development of
the IT industry in India, a story that is fairly
familiar. The large base of Indians successfully practicing
high-tech careers in other countries is also cited as a
potential benefit to the country, although it means that
many commercial services in India are aimed at emigres.

While the article repeatedly stresses that enormous barriers
remain and government efforts have shown little impact, it
ends on an upbeat paragraph: "by empowering constituent
groups that make up India's civil society: the media,
non-government organizations, businesses, political groups,
and other nonstate actors," the Internet can "invigorate the
world's largest democracy."
-- 
Monica Narula
Sarai:The New Media Initiative
29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 054
www.sarai.net