India’s Network Readiness

chillibreeze writer — Preeti Sharma

India’s recent growth

India has seen its annual growth rate ranging around 7 % and more in the recent past. It has done well, so far, leveraging on the information and communication technologies, the technical and professional competencies and the low cost manpower services.

Despite the growth, India continues to rank low in the Human Development Index rankings (127th among 177 countries). This is pointer to the fact that India needs to focus on its social and human development agenda as well.

The present growth pattern is concentrated in specific regions or urban agglomerations. There are widespread imbalances in availability and level of services of basic physical, health and educational infrastructure. As a result inequities and regional imbalances seem to be on a rise.

Assessing India’s Potential to leverage Information and Communication Technologies for development

The world is looking at India as one of the fastest growing economies of the world. As the outsourcing and investment saga continues, governments, think tanks multinational corporations, investments firms and financial analysts are making assessments of whether or not India has the capability to capitalize on the advantage it has and can it reduce the regional imbalances and digital divide between the ‘have’ and ‘have nots’.

Two important international evaluation efforts in the recent past include The Global Information Technology Report (2005-2006) by the World Economic Forum (with INSEAD, sponsored by CISCO Systems, Inc) and the E readiness rankings of the Economic Intelligence Unit and The IBM Institute of Business Value (2005).

The Global Information Technology Report (GITR) measures the ‘preparedness’ of 115 countries ‘to participate in and benefit from ICT developments’. It ranks countries based on the Network Readiness Index (NRI).

The Network readiness index comprises of three indexes:

the environment for ICT offered by a given country or community

the readiness of the community's key stakeholders - individuals, business and governments

and the usage of ICT among these stakeholders

India ranks 40th with a NRI score of 0.23. The US tops with a score of 2.02.

The Top 10 ‘Network Ready’ countries:

Country	Score	Rank
United States	2.02	1
Singapore	1.89	2
Denmark	1.80	3
Iceland	1.78	4
Finland	1.72	5
Canada	1.54	6
Taiwan	1.51	7
Sweden	1.49	8
Switzerland	1.48	9
United Kingdom	1.44	10

Source: GITR,2006

For network readiness rankings of all countries:
http://www.weforum.org/pdf/Global_Competitiveness_Reports/Reports/gitr_2006/rankings.pdf

A white paper on ‘E readiness’ of 65 countries by The Economic Intelligence Unit (EIU) and The IBM Institute of Business Value ranks India 49th (score 4.17). In the Asia Pacific region India ranks 10th out of 16 countries of the region which were evaluated.

The EIU study evaluated countries using nearly 100 criteria classified into 6 major categories:

Connectivity & technology infrastructure
Business Environment
Consumer and Business adoption
Legal & policy environment
Social and cultural environment
Supporting e services

The Top 10 ‘E ready’ nations:

Country	E readiness score( of 10)	Rank
Denmark	8.74	1
US	8.73	2
Sweden	8.64	3
Switzerland	8.62	4
UK	8.54	5
HongKong	8.32	6
Finland	8.32	6
Netherlands	8.28	8
Norway	8.27	9
Australia	8.22	10

Source: EIU White Paper on E readiness, 2005

For more information: http://graphics.eiu.com/files/ad_pdfs/2005Ereadiness_Ranking_WP.pdf

India needs to focus on human development

The picture emerging is that India is a long way off the mark as far its basic infrastructure, policy initiatives, regulatory processes and social development aspects are concerned. It may not be able to pull off a win in the end.

The Global Information Technology Report clearly states that ‘to leverage ICT effectively for growth, India must recognize the close connection between ICT policies and economic and social development, both of which lag far behind in the country’.

The government needs to play a proactive role in pushing the human development agenda, improving people’s access to technology and opportunities and evolving the necessary policy frameworks.

—About our writer:

Preeti Sharma is Assistant Coordinator of the e-publishing team of Chillibreeze and assists in research, writing and managerial support.

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