Foresight Analysis of ICT Adoption in India: A Framework on Vision 2020

Abstract

In the era of digital world, technological convergence through ICT has been receiving a significant attention. The ubiquitous connectivity provided through convergence has the potential to transform the society and establish an ecosystem to serve new dimensions to the economy of the country. Thereby, this study has attempted to identify the phenomenon of convergence on three level – upstream, midstream and downstream. Upstream level focuses on issues dealing with the synthesis of technology including R&D, FDI and Standards. Midstream level focuses on the growth of various sectors with the help of convergence including education, health, governance and employment. The downstream level focuses on the diffusion of technology in the society and includes factors like – diffusion, penetration and user friendly. The framework of Vision 2020 laid down by Planning Commission (Niti Aayog) has been adopted to choose the parameters and foresight exercise has been conducted. The opinions of experts have been taken to conduct the foresight analysis. With the help of LIPSOR scenario planning tools – Micmac, Mactor, Multipol and Smic-Prob, this paper has attempted to forecast the scenarios for the adoption of ICT in India. Following the variable analysis through Micmac and actor analysis through Mactor, this paper has attempted to generate the entire field of possibilities in terms of hypothesis and construct various scenarios through Multipol. And lastly, final scenarios were selected using the Smic-Prob by assigning the probability to all the scenarios (including the conditional probability).