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There
is no doubt that PC penetration and IT usage in India is abysmally
low. But it is not for lack of trying that these vital stats
have not climbed to respectable levels. In fact there is no
dearth of initiatives taken by the government, associations,
research institutions, private firms and even individuals.
Vineet Joshi examines these initiatives and attempts
to find out what continues to keep computers away from the
Indian masses
Ever
wondered why personal computer penetration in India is still
the most intricate, unsolved and disconcerting “problem”
even so many years after the PC first made its appearance
in this country? Or why the mere mention of this ‘issue’
makes everyone right from government, industry associations,
research bodies and even corporates squirm uncomfortably?
Take a look at some of the disturbing numbers: IT today contributes
around 2 percent of India’s GDP, but PC penetration is
just about 6 per 1,000 people. Internet penetration, which
was expected to give a fillip to PC penetration, has been
able to reach just 1 percent of the population, with 10 million
users. IT spending as a percentage of GDP is just 0.8 percent.
Compare this with countries like China where IT contributes
7 percent of GDP and PC penetration is 16 per thousand people;
Malaysia, where IT contributes 5 percent of GDP and PC penetration
is 69.4 per thousand; and Thailand where PC penetration is
22 per thousand.
Why have we recorded such dismal figures? The obvious culprits
would be lack of government support, lopsided government policy,
inadequate private sector investment, negligible R&D,
and poor support from NGOs. Surprisingly, none of these can
be cited as strong reasons in India. Ground-level examples
offer sufficient evidence to qualify the role of government,
corporates, R&D units, and NGOs in increasing PC penetration
in India.
Rough estimates put the government’s investments at anywhere
between Rs 1,000 to 1,500 crore towards various activities
aimed at spreading IT among the masses. The government has
initiated as many as a thousand pilot projects, the success
rate of which, as calculated by the authorities, stands at
40 percent.
The private sector is also not far behind, with companies
like NIIT, Infosys, Wipro and TCS having demonstrated innumerable
case studies for taking computers to the common man.
Research institutes like IBM Research Labs, Media Labs Asia,
NCST, TDIL, C-DAC, the IITs and the NIIT-sponsored Centre
for Research in Cognitive Systems, among others, have taken
up dozens of challenging projects. They have developed innovative
and intriguing products in access devices, wireless technology,
machine translation, software applications like text-to-speech,
language recognition, etc. In addition, there are several
individual efforts like that of Prof. Jhunjhunwala from IIT
Madras, who successfully attempted to provide an affordable
‘connectivity and access’ solution. Then there are
NGOs like Development Alternatives and Vaancha ICT that have
extended support towards bridging the digital divide by taking
computers and computer education to rural areas.
So what’s holding back PC penetration? Experts say the
time has come to evolve a consolidated line of thinking that
derives its wisdom and sagacity from the learning of past
successes and failures. They further feel that what’s
needed is to identify all factors directly linked with the
issue such as access devices, connectivity, and local language
software and devise self-sustaining business models for each
of them, in addition to focused and customised R&D in
each of those areas.
Looking back, the phenomenal successes of STD telephone booths,
cable TV, and the ‘white revolution’ brought about
by the dairy cooperatives concept, all point to a very clear
line of action to speed up PC penetration as well that is,
a Self Organised Collaborative Mode. As opposed to planned
expansion of telephones adopting a classical engineering model
where we have reached 36 million lines in 50 years, the cable
TV revolution wherein there was no government regulation has
notched up 40 million connections in just five years. The
same is true with STD/ISD telephone booths wherein a single
line of legislation ”If you operate a telephone booth
you will earn 20 percent commission” transformed long-distance
telephony in India. And, the Amul dairy cooperatives success
clearly demonstrates that if you collect many like-minded
small individuals you can create a gigantic, successful organisation.
“It
was the absence of policy, a high degree of community participation
and self-organising and self-sustaining business dynamics
that ensured brilliant successes with STD booths and cable
TV,” says Dr Sugata Mitra, chief scientist and senior
vice president at NIIT. “So what is required in increasing
PC penetration and IT usage is to trigger small events which
lead to a self-organised phenomenon. The government’s
role should to provide the pipeline and pen initial legislation
and let it evolve rather than itself work to make things happen.
It’s only when the community feels the desire to absorb
IT and makes business sense out of it, will it grow.”
Apart from ‘self-organisation’, experts also suggest
a ‘collective and combined approach’ for a multiplying
effect in PC penetration figures. When we have such vexing
statistics to contend with such as 1 billion people, a 50
percent literacy barrier, a 70 percent language barrier and
a huge geographical spread how can a thousand small projects
each ostensibly working in a thousand different directions
make any perceptible difference?
“Government
initiated projects, though brilliant, often fail to commercialise
technology, and private companies though successful in limited
commercialisation, can’t scale up because of limited
funds and restricted social intent,” opines Kiran Karnik,
president of the software industry’s apex body Nasscom.
“Individual entrepreneurs have brilliant ideas and technology
innovation but can’t scale up beyond a point and hence
die off. We need to evolve a synergy between various efforts
so as to give a collective thrust, which I think will surely
lead to visible changes.”
All the above arguments notwithstanding, one ultimately needs
to get down to brass tacks: Assuming some form of computing
device is available, what compelling reason does a villager
or common man have to use it? Though there’s no simple
answer, experts concur that it’s a combination of factors
and applications: those that require reasonable computing
power such as word processing, designing, multimedia, DTP,
etc; and those that require connectivity Internet with appropriate
content, e-mail, chat, wireless access, etc. So once you have
a suitable device you need connectivity. Then comes relevant
content to keep the user interested. And of course all this
has to be done with local language support built in. Let’s
take a look at where we stand on each of these issues.
Access Devices
Apart from the high prices, which ensure that PCs are beyond
the reach of most Indians, another issue that is debated among
industry analysts is the form, size and shape of an acceptable
computing device for the masses. Whether this will turn out
to be a small hand-held device, a PC in its current form,
or something entirely different, is anybody’s guess.
If it turns out to be the PC in its current avatar, what needs
to be reduced drastically is the price. MAIT, the apex body
of the Indian hardware industry, is ideally looking at a price
tag of Rs 10,000-Rs 15,000, and opines that this should be
possible in the next two years. This seems to be a rather
tall order, although some attempts at low-priced PCs have
already been made by PC manufacturers. Wipro has recently
launched a PC for Rs 20,000 based on an AMD processor and
the Linux operating system. And there are several other offerings
available in the Rs 25,000 range.
Another approach gaining credence is to look at an entirely
different form of access device. The most talked about in
the industry is the Simputer a low-cost computer with operational
computing facilities. Developed by the Simputer Trust (consisting
of scientists and developers from the Indian Institute of
Science and Encore Software) the device is pegged at Rs 15,000.
But even at such a low price level it has not yet been able
to command the volumes necessary to justify large-scale manufacturing.
Industry observers say that the price should come down to
at least Rs 9,000 to make it viable. But officials at Encore
Software believe that even at Rs 9,000, a minimum user base
of 100,000 is required to support manufacturing.
“You
cannot bring the price down initially. Products always enter
the market at a higher price, which drops later, once the
market builds up,” states Vinnie Mehta, director, MAIT.
“But one needs to take risks and have enough financial
backing to support the gestation period of 1-2 years. Unfortunately
this kind of funding is hard to come by these days.”
Why is that none of the IT industry majors, including prominent
players like Wipro, TCS, and NIIT, seem to be interested in
funding an innovative product like the Simputer? “Hard
to tell,” says Mitra. “Though it is an excellent
device for increasing PC penetration, maybe it is ahead of
its time. Perhaps it’s not in the right shape and format.”
Mehta offers some pragmatic business logic: “With the
current downturn, the confidence level of the industry is
so low that it is shying away from any kind of investment,
even if the investment has the potential for great future
returns.”
Connectivity is
everything
Assuming we solve the problem of deploying the right kind
of access device, the next question is what will the access
device be used for? Everything boils down to connectivity,
as 80 percent of computer applications for the masses ”killer
apps” such as e-mail would require some form of connectivity.
How can this connectivity be provided?
“It
should be a self-organising phenomenon similar to cable TV.
Let the private companies lay the cables without any restrictions
in terms of legislation and hindrances. The government should
consider its role in providing infrastructure rather than
endlessly promoting the IT for masses concept and initiating
small pilot projects. Pilots should be given to individual
scientists and entrepreneurs to handle,” says Mitra.
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Karnik
says paucity of funds for private entrepreneurs and poor
marketing by the govt has stalled the spread of PCs |
There
could be two ways to approach the subject. Either, bringing
the cost down in labs and then providing access, or, conversely,
laying the access network first and then letting the market
dynamics work to bring the cost down. While Prof. Ashok Jhunjhunwala
of IIT Madras postulates the former, Mitra favours the latter.
The TeNet Group of Prof. Jhunjhunwala is intently working
on bringing the cost of access down from the current level
of Rs 45,000 to a more affordable Rs 15,000. His team is also
working to bring the cost of Wireless in Local Loop (WLL)
connectivity for a given area (within 50 km) to less than
a lakh of rupees. “At this level of cost of connectivity,
computers will become immediately accessible to around 100
million Indians. This kind of volume will drive further expansion
and increase IT usage and hence computer penetration,”
says Jhunjhunwala.
Mitra’s primary contention is ‘access first and
then cost’. “It’s not that villagers have no
money. The costs could be higher to start with. We may have
fewer connections initially but the subsequent boom is inevitable.
Waiting for the cost of technology to come down and then building
access means losing crucial time,” says Mitra.
Delhi-based Vaancha ICT is following a middle approach for
building its solar powered wireless broadband communication
system for Net connectivity. Though their key objective is
to develop the requisite technology as well as ground-level
implementation, they are also keeping an eye on price.
“Though
we have not determined the price, the entire package would
certainly be below the Rs 50,000 mark,” says Brajesh
Verma, co-founder, Vaancha ICT. “We plan to create a
45 km wireless local loop on Ethernet powered by solar energy
with access points (ICT centres) also running on solar energy.
This technology and mode of access will be a great boon as
it will allow Internet and telephony to reach even those villages
which do not have reliable power access,” says Verma.
The company expects to implement a pilot project by the end
of this year.
Computing
in Indian languages
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NIIT’s
Mitra says reducing costs will have a major role
to play in helping computers find acceptance in India |
Computing
in India has essentially been the preserve of the English-speaking
minority thus far. But with e-governance catching the fancy
of the politically influential, Indian language computing
may soon get a much-needed boost. In fact with the computerisation
of government a hot topic of debate-although still far from
being a widespread reality-the local language computing market
today is estimated to be over Rs 500 crore (Rs 5 billion).
Small wonder then that companies like Microsoft, Adobe and
Quark have announced Indian-language equivalents of their
popular software titles. And government-funded research institutes
too are involved in developing local language support and
applications.
While traditionally the situation has been a bit of a chicken-and-egg
problem, trends indicate that local language apps will no
longer be a problem once computing devices and network access
reach the common man. But one still needs to ask whether we
are moving in the right direction.
There are two sides to this issue. One, deploying Indian language
content over the Internet and two, innovative software/hardware
solutions to utilise content effectively. This would include
multilingual operating systems and Web browsers, text-to-speech
software, multilingual dictation software, multilingual word
processors, machine translation systems, etc. Although compelling
content for vernacular users or for that matter anyone residing
in rural India-is as scanty as rain in Rajasthan, experts
are not overly worried on this count as they feel that content
will evolve with time and will be developed as users increase.
“The
Internet at the moment has not been able to attract rural
India as much as urban India,” states Mitra. “But
that shouldn’t worry us. My answer is, just provide access.
If, for instance, enough Tamil-speaking people are connected,
then automatically, compelling Tamil content will follow.
So, we should not break our heads over building multilingual
content at the moment.”
Adds Karnik: “The Internet has enough appeal to attract
millions with varied cultures, backgrounds and literacy levels.
But it will evolve with time as users increase in number.”
So, while content is not an issue, where are we when it comes
to hardware and software applications that will enable multilingual
computing? “For the IT revolution to be truly successful
in India, IT devices need to transcend language and literacy
barriers. One of the reasons for poor PC penetration is that
the front-end continues to be in English and only five percent
of the population can speak English,” says Mehta.
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NIIT’s
Mitra says reducing costs will have a major role
to play in helping computers find acceptance in India |
At
a recent meet organised by the Technology Development in Indian
Languages (TDIL) a department under the Ministry of Communications
and Information Technology (MCIT), around 25 companies participated
and a hundred different products were displayed. According
to Dr Om Vikas, head of the computer development division
at MCIT, “National excellence in this millennium and
PC penetration will be determined by the extent to which information
technology can deliver its potential in local languages. With
increasing corporate involvement and government focus in R&D,
multilingual computing solutions will no longer be a limiting
factor for computer usage.”
It is believed that there are over a hundred companies involved
in multilingual application development, around a thousand
products are already in the market and another 2,000 projects
are in the development phase. TDIL itself has already demonstrated
30 different projects in multilingual research and has set
up 13 resource centres and 29 Indian language technology collaborators.
The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC),
an autonomous body under the MCIT, has over 25 products supporting
multilingual computing already in the market. Some of these
are: GIST for supporting Indian languages in DOS, UNIX; ISM
Office and Publisher for a Windows-based environment and conventional
publishing; iLeap, an Indian language word processor; N-TRANS
for translation from and into Indian languages; iPlugin to
enable Internet-based applications in Hindi; and, MANTRA,
a machine-aided translation tool.
Mumbai-based NCST is also in the process of developing various
software and machine translation applications. They have already
developed IndiX for Indian language support in Linux; Vividha,
a Hindi word processor; and, MaTra, a human-aided machine
translation tool. NCST is also in the process of developing
a Machine Translation system (from English to Hindi and vice
versa, and between other Indian languages).
A
huge market
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Mehta
says provision of low cost access devices and connectivity
holds the key to the penetration of PCs in India |
In
addition to this, various companies like Mega Soft (English
& Hindi dictation), IBM Research (Speech Recognition,
TTS), Sonata Software (Indian script enabling DTP packages),
Softek (database package and accounting software in Hindi,
English), Vsoft Technologies (Indian script for Windows),
Webdunia and Mithi Software (multilingual e-mail), Lipi Data
Systems (printers capable of printing in Devnagari), Centre
for Computer Education (multimedia-based Hindi learning package,
machine-aided translation system), and the Indian Statistical
Institute (optical character recognition system for Devnagari)
are all in various stages of developing multi-purpose multi-tasking
software applications for Indian languages. All with an eye
on the 400-million-strong multilingual market which is expected
to emerge in the next couple of years.
So much has transpired in the past one year in the local language
computing arena that industry observers today don’t look
at it as a stumbling block any longer. “Just one year
back, penetrating the Indian market was a Herculean task but
today with all the listed achievements, I think reaching the
masses in terms of content and local language software and
applications will not be tough. What is required now is connectivity
and low-cost access devices,” says Vinnie Mehta.
New paradigms always throw up new questions. And in the case
of PC penetration and IT usage among the Indian masses, it’s
quite clear that there is no one solution that will solve
all problems and neither is anything going to happen overnight.
So, while there continue to exist dozens of linked problems
(literacy, language, geography, content, women/children/adult
access, business generation, etc), work needs to continue
on pilot projects, case studies and research surveys. But
ultimately, it is only an amalgamation of the various ideologies
and hypotheses that will throw up a suitable line of action.
With this approach and collective initiative, we should find
a solution to bringing IT to the common man in India in a
meaningful manner. For the sake of the nation, let’s
hope this happens sooner rather than later.
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