Thursday, November 29, 2012

Will policy makers ever take technology to the ‘We’?

... and that’s where it will end – ‘I’. Will policy makers ever take technology to the ‘We’? Good question! 

On analysing the Global Economic Prospects 2008 report, it becomes clear that if domestic skills were available to efficiently use the technologies employed, then the Indian GDP could be 4.8 times the current GDP. It’s very obvious that rural telephony and Internet penetration could phenomenally improve the reach of market initiatives and generate further employment in multi-variate sectors. The top performers were able to spread the advantages of IT across their respective countries. But in case of India, the impact of the regional progress of IT was not equally distributed amongst the masses. In spite of campaigns focussing on RTI and e-Governance, the digital-divide can be still felt between the subjects and the government. India stands at 113th position with its e-government readiness dropping by a rattling 26 positions during the last three years. And again, economies like Iran, Maldives and Sri Lanka overtook us. What’s more, India succeeded to find the 54th place out of 69 slots available in The Economist Intelligence Unit e-readiness ranking 2007 – pathetic again! Dr. Mark Dutz, Sr. Economist, The World Bank, while talking to B&E suggests that India should promote all the exciting innovations by grassroots entrepreneurs that are bubbling up from bottom of the pyramid. “A specific suggestion is to build on the National Innovation Foundation repository of more than 70,000 innovations and traditional knowledge practices from many districts across India by encouraging private entrepreneurs to commercialise the most promising ideas,” says Dutz.

Imagine the outcome of an IT united India. If all Kendriya Vidhyalayas have IT education and almost all SSIs and SMEs are linked to a central digital portal which allows online international business, India will not longer remain digitally disconnected. One must understand that technology is just not about Internet and satellites, but encompasses every sector, be it health, society, education, corruption, governance et al. Why ITC’s e-choupal model can’t be replicated to help the farmers or why can’t mobile technology be taken to the length and breadth of the country are questions that the policy makers can answer...

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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.

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