Our future’s in the balance

Over two thousand years ago, the great Greek dramatist Euripides wrote about the importance of ‘balance’: “The best and safest thing is to keep a balance in your life, acknowledge the great powers around us and in us,” he recommended. “If you can do that and live that way you are really a wise man.”

Twenty-one centuries on, his advice still holds. For, in all probability, the BJP-led government was knocked off the precipice of power in the recent Indian elections mainly because it forgot all about balance—balance between urban and rural, agricultural and industrial, radical and moderate, middle-class and poor.

Although the election result was hardly a verdict against technology per se, in a way it’s an urgent wake-up call for our infotech industry too—an industry wherein similar imbalances and anomalies abound. The new finance minister, Palaniappan Chidambaram, dismissed the previous government’s “India Shining” slogan as “mocking the poor” of the country. By the same yardstick, anyone who dares claim that India is an “IT Superpower” would be cruelly taunting the 400-million-plus literate Indians languishing on the far side of the digital divide, their only ‘failing’ being that they don’t read or write in English.

Don’t get me wrong. At no point is it my intention to condemn the super success of our BPO and software exports industries. They’ve recognised a lucrative global opportunity, seized it, and brought riches and glory to the country. We will continue to encourage them as they cross every milestone; cheer them as they eke out each new victory.

But there’s another side to the coin, and it’s an ugly one. Despite our software prowess, precious little has been done to develop applications and solutions for use within India. Poor IT penetration is both the cause and consequence in this vicious circle of anomaly and imbalance. As a result, the much-touted benefits of the digital revolution have touched the lives of just a tiny minority of Indians.

Which is why the priority list of the new minister for communications and information technology—the well-educated, tech-savvy and youthful Dayanidhi Maran—comes as a breath of fresh air, and with a generous helping of that elusive balance. Most heartening is that one of the top priorities on his ten-point agenda is to focus on PC penetration and get every citizen connected.

Tall order? You bet! India’s current personal computer penetration is barely over 1 percent, and Internet spread less than half that figure. Many factors have contributed to this abysmal state, but one of the most shameful is that successive governments have done their darnedest to make local hardware manufacture almost unviable and PCs unaffordable, by persisting with a complicated morass of regulations, licenses, taxes, tariffs and duties. Some relaxations were recently effected, and the hardware industry responded enthusiastically by posting record growth in the last fiscal. But much remains to be done, and Maran’s promise is to encourage and promote indigenous manufacture, including that of low-cost PCs and communication access devices.

Of course people don’t buy or use computers just because they’re affordable. They need compelling applications and content that makes an immediate difference to their lives. For this to happen, full-fledged computing in Indian languages is a must. Maran states that he wishes to accelerate the development and deployment of such regional-language solutions. Indeed, if he can achieve just this one objective and make pure Indian-language computing a reality, he will go down in history as the most successful IT leader we’ve ever had.

Maran wants that the 50,000 Indian villages that remain without telephone facilities be connected by the end of this year; simultaneously he’ll work to ramp up tele-density in the country to way beyond the current level of 7. Yet, although telecom has been steadily growing, Internet penetration hasn’t kept pace. Meanwhile, several ICT for Development projects (such as Tarahaat, Drishtee, Gyandoot, SARI, RISC) have shown how computer technology and the Internet can be effectively used for sustainable economic development in India’s vast rural expanse.

Maran assures us that the he’ll get all ISPs great and small to hook on to the National Internet Exchange and ensure its smooth functioning—resulting in significant cost reductions for Internet access, greater efficiencies and better services. Nice to hear also that India will jump onto the IPv6 bandwagon along with Maran by 2006—we too have advocated moving to this next-generation Internet protocol, from the point of view of increased security as well as unfettered rapid expansion of the Net in the country.

Maran’s 10-point agenda also makes some esoteric noises about convergence, and broadband for all, and India taking the lead in developing technology for 4G mobile telephony. We won’t grudge him his fantasies—as he essentially seems to have a wise head on his shoulders—but will still draw his attention to other more pressing imperatives. Like, for instance, plugging the gaps in our IT Act, especially in respect of beefing up the laws on data protection, privacy and intellectual property protection. And while he’s at it, wouldn’t it be great to have removal of all restrictions on 802.x Wi-Fi usage? That could well help make the fantasy of affordable, widespread Internet access a reality across urban as well as rural India.

Do I hear cautious whispers of ‘IT Superpower’ wafting in the wind once more? Hang on there folks; in more ways than one, our future’s still very much in the balance.

Val Souza, Editor

valsouza@expresscomputeronline.com