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Central Government, E-Government

India’s internet connectivity supports e-govt plans

By Alice Kok | 18 December 2008

India has been ranked fourth among the top ten nations in the world for high internet use. The Internet Governance forum has pinned the country as lagging behind only the United States, China and Japan with 81 million internet users in the country.

“Internet is the platform through which we are trying to bridge the digital divide in the country,” says Ravi Shankar, Joint Secretary in the Union Information Technology Ministry.

The National E-governance Plan envisaged provision of internet access to 600,000 villages through 100,000 Common Service Centres (Internet kiosks) by the end of 2009. Of the total proposed, 20,000 kiosks have been rolled out so far.

“The essence is to bring about a modicum of e-readiness through the National e-governance Plan. The Department of Information Technology is also working on a plan to build the National Knowledge Network under which 10,000 institutions of higher learning and research will be connected through a 1-GB net work and provide e-learning solutions,” Ravi Shankar said.

These 81 million internet users are not all subscribers, however. India has a total of 13.5 million internet subscribers with broadband subscribers accounting for only 5 million—when it comes to broadband connections, India misses its spot amongst the top ten.

With the number of mobile phone users touching a staggering 300 million and growing by about eight million per month, the Government of India sees mobile-internet as a further exponential growth platform.

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