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by:
Jack M. Nilles
JALA International, Inc.
Los Angeles and Bonn, November 1999
Contact:
Gesellschaft für Kommunikations- und Technologieforschung mbH, Oxfordstr. 2, D-53111 Bonn
Tel.: (+49 02 2) 9 85 30-0, Fax: (+49 02 28) 9 85 30-12, Email: info@empirica.com, http://www.empirica.com, http://www.ecatt.com, Contact: Werner B. Korte
6 India
6.1 The economy
Like China, India has a huge population-just short of one billion by the end of 1999-with more than half its workforce in agriculture. Most expectations are that both the agricultural and industrial sectors will continue to decline in terms of their proportions of the workforce, while services and information will expand their shares, as shown in Figure 17.
With only 15 telephone lines per 1,000 people in 1996, the number is expected to increase to 27 per thousand by the end of 1999. As in most developing countries, the greatest proportion of these phone lines goes to businesses and wealthier residents. Nevertheless, interest in the Internet is high and growing rapidly, as shown in Figure 18.
Figure 17: Estimated composition of the workforce in India
Although the figure shows the expected number of accounts, the number of actual users is probably 4 times that value (e.g., 6 million users vs. 1.5 million accounts by the end of the year 2000).
The first dial-up email network was established in India in1987, connecting two institutes in Mumbai (Bombay). The network was expanded by a link to Amsterdam in 1988, followed by a satellite link in 1994. Commercial Internet access was introduced in August 1995. However, the telecommunications network and Internet access in India was controlled by a government regulated monopoly, involving four different companies, until November 1998. In a matter of weeks after the end of the monopoly, 41 companies signed up to be ISPs, seven of which were to provide national coverage. According to India Internet World, 13 prospective ISPs are targeting states and major metropolitan areas; 21 are concentrating on the larger cities. That is, most of the activity is directed at providing services only for urban areas. By mid-1999 India had licensed 132 private ISPs.
Figure 18: Estimated Internet accounts in India
Long distance telephone calls and Internet access are still very expensive, in purchasing power terms, with a phone call to the US costing about 280 times the fee for a local call in India. In 1997, the monopoly ISP was charging USD450 for 500 hours of connect time with a graphic browser and USD140 for text-only browsing. Per capita GNP is only 6% of that in the US, in purchasing power terms. That barrier and the fact that there are at least ten major language groups and many dialects spoken in India, together with an adult literacy rate just above 50%, constitute serious impediments to the potential of information technology for development-at least in percentage terms. Yet, simply because of its size, India is likely to be a major player in the future e-world.
6.2 E-commerce
Electronic commerce is still in its infancy in India. For the reasons just stated, growth has been slow, confined to a few major cities and some industries, usually those with multinational companies. With the 1998 opening of the Internet market, however, a large number of new entrants have appeared. Still, as Figure 19 shows, the major boost in e-commerce is not expected until the year 2000 and beyond. The National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) has importuned the Indian government to set up a national Internet exchange. Currently, local Internet traffic goes through the US.
Figure 19: Estimated value of e-commerce in India
6.3 New Ways to Work
Figure 20: Estimated growth of telework in India
Telework may be another matter entirely. Although small in size proportionately, Indian information workers are well educated-and English-speaking-and the Indian software industry is growing rapidly, with total 1998 revenues exceeding 3.4 billion euros, according to NASSCOM, almost 10 percent of India's GDP. Annual growth is expected at rates exceeding 50%. Software exports exceeded 2.5 billion euros in 1998, for a growth rate of 68%. A significant , but not well documented, fraction of that industry involves some form of telework since many Indian software developers work for organizations in the US and Europe.
However, as far as we can determine, little telecommuting is occurring in India, even though large Indian cities are notoriously congested and there are no four-lane highways interconnecting major cities. When the cost and income factors are taken into account, the result is a wide spread between "nominal" rates of telework and the more likely cost-corrected
