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Bridging the Digital Divide in India

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BBrriiddggiinngg tthhee DDiiggiittaall DDiivviiddee iinn IInnddiiaa -- TThhee WWaayy FFoorrwwaarrdd World Summit on Information Society Thematic Meeting (ICT for Bridging the Digital Divide) Seoul, Korea on June 23-24, 2005 Mr. B.M. Baveja, Director Department of Information Technology (DIT) Ministry of Communications and IT Government of India India : Vision 2008 By 2008 the Indian IT Industry will: • $70 billion industry • Account for 7% of India’s GDP up from 4% currently • Contribute to 19% of the incremental GDP growth • Account for more than 30% of the foreign exchange inflows from 12% currently • Create direct & indirect employment opportunities for more than 9 million people Indian IT Industry - A Snap Shot…(1) • Indian Software and services For the Year 2004-05 exports registered a growth of 34.5% US$ Billion • Domestic Market revenues grew by 24% Indian IT Market 22.0 • Software exports account for Domestic IT Market 6.5 substantial 22% of India’s total IT S/w & Services Expt 12.0 exports ITES-BPO Export 5.2 • Software industry accounts for 8% of India’s foreign exchange inflows Source : NASSCOM Website • India IT market occupies a share of 4.1% of India’s GDP Indian IT Industry - A Snap Shot…(2) For the Year 2004-05 • India exports software and services to over 102 countries around the globe. • One of every four global giant outsourced their software requirements to India. • Offshore penetration of Fortune 500 increased by 33% in 2004 (from 300 in 2003 to 400 companies in 2004). Source : NASSCOM Website Growth of Internet in India Tremendous Growth of ICT due to Privatization (in millions) 2000 2004 2008 Internet subscribers 0.9 5.1 30.0 Broadband subscribers - 0.1 14.0 PC Penetration 1.5 11.0 20.0 Growth of Telecom Sector in India 2000 2004 2008 (in millions) Telecom Subscriber (Fixed) 26.6 34.2 } } 170.0 (Mobile) 1.8 48.0 } Telecom Density Urban : 25.90% Rural : 1.69% Fiber Route Kilometers : 500,000 Kms. (every village within 25 Kms. of fiber) International bandwidth : 200 Gbps (of the terabits capacity) on submarine cables 10.6Gbps (used up) Satellite Capacity : 1.4 Gbps India has 1.1 billion people . Even though IT and S/w industry is the fastest growing sector in the country only small proportion of educated people have access to IT . 35% of population is still illiterate . 26% are below poverty line . And vast majority of Indians about 70% of people living in rural are deprived of access to IT Rural India has 700 million people 600,000 plus villages 13% of villages (78,000) constitutes 52% of rural population Per Capital Rural GDP of Rs. 10,000 per year Constitutes a potential economic force Can ICT technology make a significant difference in life of rural people ? Yes and this is being increasingly addressed by both public and private sector in our country What ICT can deliver Access to information & knowledge Efficient healthcare and education services Help in gainful employment Govt. interface for filing tax, billings, statutory records etc. Efficient disbursement of loans, pensions etc Entertainment and news delivery in remote areas Value based information services Electronic Governance Bridging the gap between Government and the Industries Schemes have been developed to computerize Government services to citizens and businesses in a convenient manner At Central Level - Primary Focus on Revenue Services (Taxes) citizen services (Passport) and Information Dissemination At State Level - Primary Focus on Land Records, Citizen Records, etc Development of National Citizen ID’s, e-Governance infrastructure digital/Education Content are currently being undertaken Projects under Government Initiatives CICs Vidya Vahini Media Lab Asia Indian Language Technologies Digital Library Shruti Telemedicine E-learning Simputer Bhoomi Tele information centers Gram Patra Community Information Centres (CICs) DIT has set up 487 CICs in 8 North Eastern states Strong communication infrastructure was lacking IT has consistently catalyzed socio-economic development CICs used Satellite based communication to overcome the challenge of terrain and geographic remoteness Services provided are web access, e-learning, commerce etc Further CICs being set up in Andaman & Nicobar Islands, J&K, HP and other backward states. Vidya Vahini Pilot project Vidya Vahini meaning transporting education is being implemented by ERNET organisation of DIT over its nationwide terrestrial as well as satellite network by integrating Intranet and Internet tools into learning environment Program focuses on : • Providing ICT infrastructure to educational institutions • Training of the teachers to develop educational content & use ICT for imparting education • Providing different learning resources which include educational tools, course curriculum and other learning material • In the initial stage schools have been connected on intranet & internet through Broadband VSATs Vidya Vahini Portal Media Lab Asia Media Lab Asia is the academic research program dedicated to provide affordable communication to remote, rural areas with a special focus on meeting the grand challenges in learning, health, and economic development. Developed in association with DIT and participation of more than a dozen leading technical & business Universities with seed funding from Government of India AIMS: Develop low cost computing devices Bringing low cost connectivity to doorsteps of rural masses. Creating low cost earning tools to bring out spirit of innovation. To create a Digital Village Indian Languages Technologies India is a multilingual multi-script country with 18 Constitutional languages with 10 Scripts and over 1650 dialects and only 5% population know English. DIT has initiated Technology Development Projects for Indian Languages Aim - Develop technologies for Communicating without language barrier & moving up the knowledge chain Highlights of Achievements: Translation Support Systems -English to Hindi above 85% accuracy Human Machine Interface System Optical Character Recognition (OCR) - Available for 7 Indian Languages with above 97% accuracy Text To Speech System (TTS) - Ready in Four Indian Languages Continuous Speech Recognition (CSR) - Available in Hindi only Digital Library Main Purpose: Index community collections so that users can browse within an intersperse of a billion of repositories Universal Digital Library (UDL) Aims at creating a free to read, searchable collection of 1 Million Books available on the internet. Involves major countries like Australia, USA, India, China etc. Efforts are been taken to put contents in Indian Languages as much as possible. “SHRUTI”- Braille in Indian Language A Computerised Braille transcription system developed by IIT Kharagpur supports 13 Million Print Disabled Citizens A web fully accessible to the print-disabled Citizen using text- to-speech software and Navigation is user friendly. One Stop Site for all queries of the blind and areas covered : . Information on Audio books, Braille. Electronic texts and special media magazines. Search Repository for blind schools, eye hospitals, low- vision clinics, blindness and related organizations for India and Worldwide, Employment & Recreation Opportunities. On hosting on IIT site it will fill the gap of Asian Nations that have no website for blindness. Telemedicine Purpose: Use ICT for diagnosis and treatment of diseases Programs Initiated : . Development of Telemedicine technology using high speed communication . Telemedicine for diagnosis and monitoring of tropical diseases . Development of CancerNet. Setting up of Telemedicine centers in NE Region. Telemedicine Standardization. Building framework for IT infrastructure for health E-Learning Development in the following areas have been undertaken for alleviating the digital divide : • National Resource Center for online learning. • Web Based intelligent interactive tutoring system. • Development of component based functionality to e - learning Tools • Multi-Model Distance Education for IT and other Critical Technologies Simputer Low Cost Hand Held Computer A low cost Hand Held Computer developed for various applications Developed by DIT along with Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore Main projects initiated are: • ‘Simputerisation’ of IISc Campus : Deployment & evaluation of Simputer platform in application in Science, Engg and Humanities. • Simputer Production, Training & application development : Implementation of design enhancements to the current prototypes to qualify for mass production Bhoomi Computerisation of Land Records Land records are required for a variety of social, economic and legal purposes e.g. security of tenure, seeking crop loans, getting scholarships Computerization of land records started in 1991 in many states with the association of National Informatics Center. Progress was outstanding in Karnataka State where total records generated were 20 million of 30,000 villag and service provided to 7 million farmers in 3 years time. Benefits : . Easy and quick availability of land records documents for the public • Farmers can check the status of changes-in- progress on land titles • Revenue administration is benefited by easy maintenance and updation of land records Tele-info Centres.. Internet/Telephone Connectivity to Villages . Internet Dhabas • Concessional franchise scheme with 85% finance launched by government public telco, BSNL to open Internet Dhabas (kiosks) at all blocks in first phase and subsequently to all villages •
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