Digitizing India

Digitizing

Digitizing India: What we mean by Digitizing is making available “right information” to people, at the click of button and empower them to use the information and act on it; again at the click of button. The information could be absolutely anything, his essential bills, exam results, piece of news, travel bookings, product information, usage information, service … etc. Digitizing is important because GDP growth is closely linked to Digitizing, PC, and Internet penetration.

Following are the Two types of Digital divides in India

1st Digital divide: Between Urban, rich who are part of the Information Age and the poor and powerless, rural who are not.

2nd Digital divide: less often noted, is linguistic and cultural. In many nations this divide separates those who speak English from those who do not.

Three pillars which will enable to Digitize India

1. PC Penetration

2. Broadband and Internet Access

3. Mobile penetration

How can we remove the digital divide

· Making PC, Internet and Broadband available in all parts of country

· Taking steps to boost demand for PC & internet.

· Affordability is the key to increase penetration rapidly

· To influence price & affordability, manufacturing electronic hardware locally is the key.

· Content should be in local languages. Making more & more content and sites in India rather than USA. Promote “.in” aggressively.

What can be done –

Strong Economy:

Strong economic fundamentals, consistent high growth of GDP, large and growing market.

Manpower:

Growing repository of skilled, scientific, engineering and managerial manpower, comparatively lower wages and salaries, acknowledged software skills important in context of trend towards software driven products.

Strategic Location:

Shifting of manufacturing to locations closer to customer / or to low cost geographic locations is an imperative of globalization. India is also strategically located for catering to the markets in the Middle-East, South East Asia and Africa. (Which offer growth potentials)

Taxation

· Govt should ensure a common taxation rate across all products and sectors in the electronics industry

We need a common tax rate across all products, sectors in electronics.

The immediate priority is to have a stable, simple and transparent taxation regime for a period of 5-10 years so vendors can take a long-term view on investment.

Currently States levy VAT at 4%, (result of a crucial role & good work done by MAIT). States must continue the same rate for at least 10 next years without any increase or else prices would go up.

Removing digital divide is the collective responsibility of both the Centre and the State and we must see full support from them.

· Infrastructure & process improvement

· Govt must now push to get the top component companies to come to India. Time is now otherwise tomorrow it may be too late and we may miss the bus.

Digital Inclusion

· Govt should make it mandatory for each of 20 nationalized banks and 32 private banks to earmark separate funds of Rs 100 cr every year as loans for PC, Internet and Broadband thus a planned and compulsory spend of Rs 5200 Cr each year.

· Govt should include compulsory PC literacy courses for all its employees and facilitate loans for them to buy PC & Broadband at home. PC literate employees will contribute much higher in offices

· Enable all govt and private schools to avail PC & broadband facility for middle school & high school students at affordable prices. We need an aggressive policy like China on 1:1 ratio of students to PC’s.

Sustainability

While we are developing manufacturing capabilities & increase utilization of IT, we must take equal care for all environmental factors. We have to create sustainable development.

· ISO certification: The facilities should be ISO 14001 certified for quality standards.

(HCL is the first Indian IT company in the country to be ISO14001 compliant)

· All the IT products manufactured should be RoHS compliant

(HCL is the 1st company in India to launch RoHS compliant laptops. All HCL Laptops are RoHS compliant. HCL commits to achieve total RoHS compliance for its manufactured products by 1 Jan 08)

· Green Electronics: There should be clear policies and ways to reduce and recycle whatever is the e waste

VISION for India by 2012

· Position India as the Fifth largest ICTE manufacturing nation(after China, USA, Japan and South Korea) in the next Five years

· To have all component manufacturing plants for PCs other electronic products in India selling at affordable prices

· PC penetration to increase to at least 100 computers per thousand across India with rural penetration of 50 per thousand.

· Internet penetration at 25% of population with broadband penetration > 15%.

· “Digital Inclusion” enabled both at urban and rural areas

Conclusion:

Developing and fostering an environment conducive to IT hardware manufacturing is the cornerstone for Digitizing India. Digitizing should be viewed as a basic need along with food, water, electricity and all efforts must be made to providing it. PC, Internet and Broadband penetration in rural areas is critical.

Lastly as CK Prahlad says “Improving the lives of the billions of people at the bottom of the economic pyramid is a noble endeavour. It can also be a lucrative one”.