Title: Digital India: A Call for Action
Pages: 24 pp.
Publisher: Internet and Mobile Association of India
Date (published): 07/10/2009
Date (accessed): 12/04/2010
Type of information: strategy paper
Language: English
On-line access: yes (pdf)
Abstract:
With the number of internet users set to touch 50 million and the number of mobile users already over 400 million, India is on the verge of a Second Information Technology Revolution led by connectivity or the Digital Revolution. This revolution is about reaching the benefits of technology to the people of India.
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Why are we then not able to achieve the benefits of a digital revolution in India? Why is that countries lagging behind or travelling with us as late as three years ago have gone far ahead and are reaping the benefits of connectivity? The answers are complicated and but not far to seek: we as a nation have no agreement on the benefits of connectivity, we as a nation are happy to have islands of excellence in the vast sea of mediocrity, we as a nation are not aware of the economic and social costs of lack of connectivity to our developmental goals.
What needs to be done to unleash the digital revolution? Not an easy question to answer. But certainly what we need to do is to take a few steps to enable access, make it affordable, allow for an environment for development of applications and encourage people to adopt internet – and hope that this will lead to a self sustaining process which will allow us as individuals, communities and a nation to reap the benefits of leveraging internet to our benefit.