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ICT and Society: Questioning India's Ability to Harness ICT

The study questions and builds the arguments on the developmental issues of ICT taking various parameters such as sector structure; sector efficiency and capacity; access; usages; quality; affordability; trade; and applications. Based on the performance of these parameters, India is compared by bench marking with average performance of different regions e.g., South Asia, Lower Middle Income Group (LMIG), High-Income Group (HIG) and the World. To judge the current and past position, data for the year 2005 and 2010 have been used. India’s telecommunication sector structure could be comparable with the best in the world from the viewpoints of appointing Regulatory Authority and inculcating the competition in all the layers of telecommunication services. Country has been investing in telecommunication sector more than its telecommunication revenue, because of its urgency, as large population is deprived from the basic telecommunication services. However, India severely lacks in ICT access and to fulfill the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), it must provide comparable telecommunication infrastructure. India attains the distinction of being a mobile nation, while mobile cellular density is one of the lowest in the world, but its usage is highest in the world. Mobile tariffs initially remained out of reach for a common person, but due to successive efforts of liberalization and inculcating competition in the telecom sector, tariff rate came down drastically. India now has one of lowest mobile tariff rates in the world. In quality of telecommunication network, India has to learn lot, but in affordability, it is a most affordable nation to provide low cost services in fixed telephony, mobile, fixed broadband internet and international call rates to US. India leads the world by contributing 47 percent ICT service exports in 2010, higher than any economic region compared in the study. However, for ICT goods export and import, it lags behind most of LMIG, and HIG countries. Finally, ICT applications in the economy need to be interwoven to take the benefits of ICT to masses.