By ICTpost Gvernance Bureau
The first IT revolution took Indian IT to the whole world. The second IT revolution should bring the world of IT to the whole of India
Recent experience in India has amply demonstrated that, at the ground level, the boundaries between e-Governance, e-commerce and e-society fade away. The same physical infrastructure is used by all of them. Where assisted access is available, the same people facilitate all of them. Each propels the others to greater speed of adoption and wider usage. The distinction remains useful as an analytical construct and sometimes for policy purposes, but it is important to note that these three domains are inextricably interwoven strands permeating the same cyberspace.
Fortunately, at this point in 2021, India has shown itself to be an aggressive adopter of technology as evidenced by the boom in mobile telephony and the proliferation of services riding on it. This is perhaps the only field where we have outpaced every other nation in the world including China. e-Services in general, seem to be entering an exponential phase of growth in the country and India has become the recognised leader in the world in innovation in the use of ICT for development, especially in fields that figure prominently in the millennium development goals like education, health and agriculture.
The vision for 2021 therefore needs to take into account these two key features and be translatable into an aggressively ambitious, yet realisable set of goals which all the stakeholders can relate to. While working out lofty, yet achievable goals, it is important to factor in the difference in the roles of government, businesses and people in these three areas. The role of government is direct and decisive in e-Governance but facilitative in e-Commerce and e-Society through policies, regulation and promotion. The role of business, as implementers, users and promoters is direct and decisive in e-Commerce, but supportive in the others. The role and attitude of people holds the key to ushering in an e-Society, but their response can provide a huge stimulus in the other two areas.
While drawing their motive power from different sources, these three segments have huge synergies as well as interdependencies and progress in one without commensurate progress in the others will stall very quickly. e-Governance is the only segment which is relatively demand inelastic, its goals set the tone for realising the vision of Digital India.
Wireless Broadband and Mobile Access in all towns and villages
USOF has taken some important steps to create shared passive infrastructure thereby lowering costs, improving affordability and facilitating penetration in rural areas. Once spectrum issues are resolved in the near future, USOF would also be able to utilize existing fund balances with it to provide financial support to service providers to provide BWA in rural areas. Creating a competitive environment in the provision of BWA in rural areas is essential to ensure reliability and quality of services, apart from affordable cost. e-Governance is the only segment which is relatively demand inelastic, its goals set the tone for realising the vision of e-India.
Common Service Centres (CSCs) in all villages
Under the CSC Programme, 3.6 lakh CSCs are being set up to provide assisted access in rural villages dispersed equitably across the 600,000+ villages in the country. This is expected to create a spurt in e-services, both government and private. It is expected to result in proliferation of services and continuous value addition to the services, creating a seamless merger between e-services and extended physical services. An example is home delivery of all kinds of goods, services and communications as a value addition. Another example is local customisation and extension of a nationally or regionally available e-service. Increasing number of services and increasing coverage would lead to accelerating availability and exponential growth of both. Once the number and availability of services increases above a certain minimum level, the viability and sustainability of CSCs would improve substantially and enable penetration to enter the next phase eventually leading to access through such shared, assisted infrastructure in all villages by 2021.
All major public services available through call centres
Apart from services being available on line, services made available on mobile/landline through call centres is already being planned. Obviously, e-enabling the service is a condition precedent to making available through a call centre the whole or such part of the service as may be feasible. Given that mobile phones and voice communication will continue to dominate the Indian market in the near and possibly medium term as well, establishment of such call centres is critical for enabling a far wider cross section of people to derive the benefit of e-services. The availability of a service through a call centre could move in lock step with its e-enablement. editor@ictpost.com
