The action taken includes drastic reduction in the cost of PCs to below Rs.10,000/- level, nil Customs Duty on Computers, reduction in excise duty to 12 per cent, exemption from excise duty to Microprocessors, Hard Disc Drives, Floppy Disc Drives, CD ROM Drives, DVD Drives, USB Flash Memory and Combo Drives, reduction of depreciation on computers to 60 per cent, Value Added Tax (VAT) on computers at 4 per cent.
These measures, however, are not enough to increase PC penetration in India unless the Government of India intervenes to help fund the content developers in the local languages to correlate the messages to the people in their own languages and at the same time launch a mass campaign about the utility of PC. For this, successful programmes piloted by different States throughout the country as mission modes would have to be replicated in addition to promotion of the use of PC and Internet by spreading e-Governance and citizen centric services offered by the Government by extending State Wide Area Network (SWAN) at the village level and scaling up of State level initiatives.
The current drive for e-Governance initiatives by the Department of Information Technology to assess e-Readiness of the States and Union Territory in the country, which takes into account their network readiness, penetration of ICT, computer literacy, PC penetration and so on needs to be pressed hard with greater vigour and on a war footing in order to enable States and Union Territories to prepare a roadmap for their e-Readiness ranking and economic development. Lowering of guard and efforts in this regard may prove to be detrimental to India vis-Ã -vis China and other fast growing South East Asian and other nations having already introduced English from the primary school level. As it is, despite the National Knowledge Commission, headed by Sam Pitroda, having already recommended introduction of English from the primary school level uniformly nation wide, most of the States continue to impart education in their local language and vernacular placing boys and girls from rural India in disadvantageous position thus depriving them of the fruits of globalization, modernity and prosperity. This needs to be addressed urgently on an emergency scale if computer literacy and PC penetration in the country have to be accelerated.
Unless the digital divide between urban and rural India is bridged, balanced growth of the nation cannot be had as has happened in the general development indices of the planned growth so far. The consequences will be growing unemployment in rural India, heightened social tension and further impetus to naxalism. To ensure even and faster growth of computer literacy, States will have to shun their local language chauvinism by introducing English compulsorily as a world language for modernity and prosperity as already advised by the National Knowledge Commission lest current imbalances in the development of India should be continuing unabated. #
Bridging the Digital Divide in India
M. Y. Siddiqui - 25-07-2009 11:04 GMT-0000
Following recommendations of an Expert Committee on PC Penetration, Internet and Domestic Software in 2005, envisioning pace of PC penetration in India to the level of 65 per 1000population by 2008 from the existing 14 per 1000, Internet penetration of 40 per 1000 from the existing 5 per 1000, growth of domestic software industry from US$ 4 billion to US$ 28 billion and IT contributing significantly to the growth of the national Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the Union Government in the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology has taken some measures to give effect to its findings.