India Has Clear 'Digital Divide'

The digital divide seen in India is the most pronounced among its peer nations, according to a recent study.

New research from Maplecroft shows that India falls behind the other BRIC nations of Brazil, Russia and China when it comes to digital inclusion.

The research identifies nations “stifled” by insufficient “digital inclusion – the ability to use and access information communication technologies (ICTs), such as computers, the Internet and mobile phones,” Maplecroft said in a company press release.

The Digital Inclusion Index uses 10 indicators to rank digital inclusion. These include: number of mobile cellular and broadband subscriptions; fixed telephone lines; households with a PC and television; Internet users and secure Internet servers; Internet bandwidth; secondary education enrollment; and adult literacy.

Of the BRIC countries, India is the only one to be identified as having “extreme risk.”

In India, wealthier populations, living mostly in cities, use new communications technology, Maplecroft said. But the “vast majority of the population has … been excluded from this process,” Maplecroft adds.

“A vast proportion of its 1.2 billion population had no access to the Internet,” AFP said about India.

“Most cannot afford ICTs (only 3 percent of households own PCs), lack the education required to use it effectively (India has secondary school enrolment rates of 55 percent and adult literacy rates of just under 63 percent) and are located in geographical areas that have little or no connectivity to ICT services,” Maplecroft explains.

Even so, Maplecroft said that India is one of the quickest growing economies in the world, and is projected to see 9 percent expansion in the new financial year, which starts on April 1. And India is expanding third-generation (3G) phone services, which will likely lead to increased use of Internet services in rural areas.

In comparison, China, Brazil and Russia are at medium risk, according to the study.

Maplecroft said that the countries with the best access to ICTs are: the Netherlands, Denmark, Luxembourg, Sweden and the United Kingdom. In addition, China has the largest number of Internet users with 420 million.

“Digital inclusion is important in both enabling people to participate in economic activity as well as facilitating their participation in the very process of democratic governance and education,” Alyson Warhurst, CEO of Maplecroft, said in a statement from the consulting firm. “Digital inclusion has the potential to bring education to people in countries where educational infrastructure is limited and the development of cadres of teachers is still constrained.”

Maplecroft also notes in its study that the Internet and mobile phones had an important role in the uprisings that took place in Tunisia and Egypt, as well as Libya.

Social networking sites such as Facebook (News - Alert) and Twitter influenced and assisted protestors, Maplecroft said. That was especially true for Tunisia, where a third of the population uses the Internet and about 16 percent of the population uses Facebook.

Sub-Saharan Africa is by far the worst region as far as digital inclusion, with 29 of the 39 countries ranked as having extreme risk in the index, Maplecroft said. These are: Niger, Chad, Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone, the Central African Republic, Mali, Guinea and Mozambique.

A less serious digital divide exists in the United States. TMCnet reports that when it comes to U.S. broadband use, gaps persist along racial, ethnic and geographic lines, according to a new government study.