Wiring India

It took two years and two governments to even begin to deliver, but finally India seems to be headed for the up ramp to the information superhighway. The suggestions of the National Task Force are intelligent. If properly implemented, they can kick off the long-awaited infotech explosion.

This government has scored over the previous one which started the process of liberalisation in this sector on two counts. It has chosen advisors who actually use and understand the technologies involved. And it has taken into account the needs of the end-user, while the earlier government was thinking almost exclusively of the needs of the corporate sector. The report of the task force, on the contrary, is a document with vision which talks not merely of how to install new technology, but also of how to deploy it for the public good. Particularly laudable is the decision to allow public call offices and STD/ISD booths to start commercial Internet services. The most obvious bottleneck holding this nation back is lack ofaccess to authentic information, and this is the cheapest way to cure it. Besides, these offices, especially in the small towns, can become centres of a booming business in data entry and content creation. The United Front government had, at one time, considered installing an Internet connection in every village. These would become business centres through which people could sell information products and advertise their services overseas. The PCO scheme appears to be a more reasonable alternative because it already has an installed base. Hopefully, it may be able to slow the rate of migration to the metros. It could also bring home the need for transparency to the government long before the Right to Information Bill makes it through Parliament. Once people are able to see the wealth of information that other governments give public access to, there will be massive pressure on ours to open up. And once the new stress on infotech in schools begins to bear fruit, the number of people putting pressure on for morechange will grow.

The most interesting aspect of the document is a demand for dismantling the barriers between various media and telecommunications networks. While reiterating that the Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited8217;s monopoly on Internet gateway services should be ended, it also calls for free interconnectivity between public and private networks. More importantly, it suggests that Internet facilities be distributed over cable TV links, which already have an installed base of millions of homes. Equally noteworthy is the support for the previous government8217;s initiative to use the fibre-optic networks of public sector enterprises, the Railways and electricity corporations as part of a national Internet backbone. While they are about it, they might also want to look at Norweb, a subsidiary of Northern telecom in England, which is testing a technology to carry Internet signals over standard electricity lines. If the task force8217;s recommendations are actually implemented, an Internet boom is inevitable. But therelies the catch. The first phase of liberalisation in the United Front8217;s day was also supposed to make India an infotech superpower. Wonder what happened.