Search the Internet          Tips  Sites: Finance, Investment

ADB tells India to bridge digital divide with ICT

Fakir Chand in Bangalore

Information and Communications Technology, or ICT is the latest mantra being chanted into the ears of the native governments by global players like the Asian Development Bank to enable India bridge the digital divide and leap-frog into the forefront of socio-economic development in the world.

Delivering the keynote address at the inaugural session of the three-day regional round-table on ICT in Bangalore on Tuesday, ADB director Yoshihiro Iwasaki told the 300-odd delegates, including the high-profile and IT-savvy chief ministers of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka that India should make best use of its rich human/technology resources and competitive edge for bridging the gap between its haves and have-nots.

"The digital divide is not insurmountable. India is a live example of how even a country with low per capita income can make rapid strides in the development of ITC. It is by no means a technology relevant only for the rich countries. On the contrary, it is an extremely powerful tool which can be effectively used to reduce poverty and help the poorer citizens move up the value chain," declared Iwasaki.

Stating that ICT can be a leading engine of growth in developing countries like India, Iwasaki affirmed that growth was the only sustainable route to poverty reduction in the long run.

"By enhancing access to education and health care through distance learning and tele-medicine, ICT can improve the quality of life for poor rural communities who do not have access to these facilities."

Describing the several advantages and benefits of ICT in day-to-day life of common folk, Iwasaki cited how instant access to better and timely information could increase the income earning capability of poor communities.

"The Indian fishing village of Veerampatinam in Tamil Nadu is a case in point, where weather forecasts downloaded from the Internet and broadcast by loud speakers at the beach enabled the poor fishermen to know better when to venture into the sea in their boats for fishing," Iwasaki pointed out.

Similarly, the Grameen phone in Bangladesh and the public call booths dotting the Indian countryside only go to show how the poor rural communities in developing countries can access the state-of-the-art telecommunications without owning any equipment, per se.

"I'm told that the access to national and international trunk dialing facilities in India's villages is now the envy of even some most advanced or industrialized countries. Far from being an instrument for the rich, ICT is an extremely powerful tool for empowering the poor. Greater transparency, accountability, and responsiveness within governments which comes with e-government is a great boon to the poor, who are generally the worst victims of harassment by corrupt officials," Iwasaki asserted.

Highlighting the progressive role played by global financial institutions like the ADB, Iwasaki said India should have a building block strategy towards ushering an ICT revolution across the country.

India needs to expand on top priority its basic infrastructure because technology is the driving force of the ICT industry, and much of this rapidly advancing technology is embodied in infrastructure.

"In a poor country with scarce capital, the judicious use of investment funds is therefore critical, as is imaginative use of the existing capital stock. Tele-centers, Internet kiosks, and community learning centers are best examples of how this can be accomplished," Iwasaki stressed.

Flowing from the ADB's mission of reducing poverty in Asia, and the G8's Okinawa Charter on the Global Information Society, Iwasaki said the ADB was committed to bridging the digital divide in Asia.

"To meet this goal with limited resources, the ADB has adopted a strategy of selective intervention in support of ICT development. The three areas identified for such strategic intervention include i) creation of an enabling environment for ICT development; ii) building human resources, and iii) developing ICT applications and information content in ADB assisted projects."

Quoting the success stories of Singapore and other developing countries in the effective use of ICT in governance, Iwasaki said the ICT revolution was also having profound effects on the various modes of governance. With the possibility of speedier communications, transparent record-keeping and ICT-based management in government, the delivery of public services and regulatory functions are being radically transformed.

"The need of the hour is to change the present brick and mortar governance to e-governance by the political leadership at the top, and a great deal of effort in overcoming resistance from vested interests," Iwaskaki said and referred to the several initiatives taken by the IT-savvy chief ministers of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka during the last couple of years to usher in e-governance.

Advocating a diverse use and applications of ICT for improving the quality of life, Iwasaki said ICT revolution was not confined to economic activity alone. Tele-medicine and e-education have served as force multipliers to make the services of the best teachers, surgeons, and doctors available to thousands of students and patients in remote locations, who could not have hoped earlier to have access to such services.

"Tele-centers, Internet kiosks and community learning centers have made access to information affordable to the masses on a large scale. The advent of ICT has also generated new kinds of services, organizations, jobs and market structures. Outsourcing has now emerged as a cost-effective option in many businesses. Vendors are now peddling everything from books and music to cars and machines through the Internet," Iwasaki referred.

Regretting that access to digital technologies remained highly unequal globally and even among the developing countries themselves, Iwasaki said much of e-business was being carried out within the developed world only.

In the US, for instance, it is estimated that some 250,000 firms processes transactions in the order a whopping $3 trillion.

"This is not surprising since the access to the Internet is very cheap in the US relatively to income levels, but prohibitively expensive in most developing countries. The Human Development Report for 2001 indicate that Internet access charges amounts to only 1.2 per cent of average monthly income in

the US, compared 60 per cent in Sri Lanka and far more in other developing nations. including India," Iwasaki averred.

Referring to the great Indian brain drain, Iwasaki said every year about 70,000 ICT-related graduates migrate to the US from the world over, and of whom half are from India. There are additional ICT-linked Indian migrants to Europe and Asian destinations like Singapore, Japan and Hong Kong.

"Traditionally, this migration would be seen in a purely negative light as a brain drain. But today, we know that the same migrants constitute a highly skilled Indian diaspora, which is pulling India into a global digital network through business links and the transfer of both resources and technology.

Secondly, it is also a recognition of the fact that the ICT revolution in India is led by private enterprise and capital, as it should be.

However, this would not have happened without the enabling environment provided by governments, particularly, the supportive role of forward-looking state governments likes Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka.

At the same time, the rapid growth of ICT would not have been possible without massive investments in the state-of-the art ICT infrastructure and in human resources developed through a network of top quality engineering institutes like the IITs," Kawasaki asserted.

Emphasizing the need for a sound and long-term ICT strategy on part of the Indian government and its various federal states, Iwasaki said investment in human resources to create a growing pool of skilled personnel for the ICT sector was paramount.

"Links between academia and industry, combined with the use of ICT itself for remote learning can lead to the rapid expansion of ICT skilled human resources. The other important building block of an ICT strategy is venture capital, which pushes innovation and expansion in the ICT sector."

Money
Business News

Tell us what you think of this report