The Internet in India

Abstract

ndia: The world’s largestdemocracy; focal point of com-petition between rivalempires—local and foreign—formore than 4,000 years; the world’ssecond most populous nation, afterthe People’s Republic of China. The number of English-speakingprofessionals, large middle class,and extensive community ofIndian expatriates workingand studying in NorthAmerica and Europe sug-gest India should be aswell-developed as a pro-ducer and user of infor-mation technology asChina. However, althoughIndia is world famous forsoftware exports, includingcode, finished products, andbrainpower (body-shopping),the country lags behind its largeneighbor in virtually every othersector, including Internet connec-tivity [4]. For example, India has hadInternet connectivity since 1989,but China, where connectivitybegan in 1993, already has twicethe number of hosts and threetimes the number of users. InIndia, per-capita use and the num-ber of network domains and hostshave developed slowly (Table 1).The Indian government andpeople expect this situation toimprove in the near future; weexamine the basis of this belief andprospects for growth success. Thecentral and some state governmentshave chosen a basic route to devel-opment: build the infrastructureand national wealth shall follow. Specifically, the central governmentrecently announced major initia-tives in the IT sector, based uponthe belief that IT at once forms anecessary base for most other formsof development and is one of India’snotable strengths. The IndianNational Task Force on IT andSoftware Development has singledout the Internet as fundamental tofuture IT development.