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World Summit on Information Society Thematic Meeting (ICT for Bridging the ) 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 : 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

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 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,

 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 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/ 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 • Information support for rural masses through Internet kiosks . Bharat Nirman • A rural infrastruture programme with 6 Key areas – irrigation, drinking water, housing electricity & communication • Four year business plan launched by BSNL to widen the communication area • Target is to give telephone connectivity to 66,822 villages by 2009 Gram Patra - E-delivery to villages

 Developed by Media Lab Asia to store-and-forward information delivery using Wi-Fi Technology

 Used for e-governance applications and delivery of digital content/ e-mails in locations that do not have online internet connectivity

 IIT Kharagpur is developing softwares for adult literacy in Bengali language and currently is being tested at villages in

 This technology can be developed and adapted in other areas in other languages as well

 IIT has also developed technology for helping people suffering from cerebral palsy in communicating with outside world Projects under public/private initiatives

 E-Chaupal

 Akshaya

 A.P. Broadband Network

 Rajiv Internet Village Program E-Chaupal – better prices for produce and inputs

 A Project of ITC for a more efficient supply chain mangement covers 31,000 villages through VSAT links in states of , UP, , AP and Karnataka.  Benefits : • Provides million of farmers about critical information about farming. e.g.: Weather forecast, ordering of fertilizers and herbicides, etc. • Farmers can even buy Life Insurance, apply for loans and even check exam results.  Future Plans : • Develop infrastructure to sell third-party products. • Provide rural market research services. • Provide services like Health Advisories and E- Governance Akshaya - Basic IT Literacy

 Project being implemented by IT Dept. Govt. of with private sector participation.  To impart basic IT literacy to at least one member in each of the 65,00,000 families

 Key Issues :

• Bringing benefits of technology to households. • Provide ample information base in local language. • Sufficient understanding of world of IT and how it can touch their lives in terms of using simple programs and internet browsing, etc. A.P. Broadband Network

An initiative of with public private partnership will have 80,000 Kms of fiber linking villages (22,000) in AP Stat within a period of 65 weeks  Providing 2Mb and 100 Mb Broadband services at a highly affordable tariff in rural areas Rajiv Internet Village Program

 Rajiv Internet Centers, that would serve as multi-purpose citizen services centres and internet cafes are being set up in 8000 villages in Andhra Pradesh by end of 2005 To Conclude…

 The focus of all these project is to bridge Digital Divide in India and a sustainable business model for village entrepreneurs

 There is a great deal of seriousness on all fronts of India about taking IT and Communications to rural India

 If the benefits of IT have to reach the smallest rural producer, it is obvious to have access to IT services in the remotest part of India

 A number of integrated issues like availability affordability, integration and standardization of access devices and the high cost of establishing the infrastructure still needs to be solved …Conclude

 Computers were not created to solve the problems of poverty

 But, information is power and if this power is shared equitably, then all will benefit

 Bringing Internet-based technologies to the village makes possible a number of applications like Health Care, Extension services, Weather updates, etc

 All these can give a boost to the economic development of rural areas and give them access to market at large For further information contact Email: [email protected] www.mit.gov.in Thank you

6/24/2005