nach oben

Erschienen in:

2016 | OriginalPaper | Buchkapitel

14. Information Technology and Its Role in India’s Economic Development: A Review

verfasst von : Nirvikar Singh

Erschienen in: Development in India

Verlag: Springer India

Einloggen

Aktivieren Sie unsere intelligente Suche, um passende Fachinhalte oder Patente zu finden.

search-config

KI-gestützte Suche

Aus

Abstract

Information technology (IT) is an example of a general purpose technology that has the potential to play an important role in economic growth, as well as other dimensions of economic and social development. This paper reviews several interrelated aspects of the role of information technology in the evolution of India’s economy. It considers the unexpected success of India’s software export sector and the spillovers of this success into various IT enabled services, attempts to make IT and its benefits available to India’s rural masses, e-commerce for the country’s growing middle class, the use and impacts of IT in India’s manufacturing sector, and various forms of e-governance, including internal systems as well as citizen interfaces. The paper concludes with an overall assessment of these different facets of IT in the context of the Indian economy.

Sie haben noch keine Lizenz? Dann Informieren Sie sich jetzt über unsere Produkte:

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 102.000 Bücher
über 537 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Automobil + Motoren
Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Elektrotechnik + Elektronik
Energie + Nachhaltigkeit
Finance + Banking
Management + Führung
Marketing + Vertrieb
Maschinenbau + Werkstoffe
Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

Jetzt informieren

Springer Professional "Technik"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Technik" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 67.000 Bücher
über 390 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Automobil + Motoren
Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Elektrotechnik + Elektronik
Energie + Nachhaltigkeit
Maschinenbau + Werkstoffe

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

Jetzt informieren

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 67.000 Bücher
über 340 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Finance + Banking
Management + Führung
Marketing + Vertrieb
Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

Jetzt informieren

Vorheriges Kapitel Finite Change—Implication for Trade Theory, Policy and Development

Nächstes Kapitel Value of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services in South Asia and India: Past, Present and Future

Throughout this paper, I mostly use the term IT, rather than the common alternative of ICT, which stands for information and communication technologies. Since IT covers processing, storage and communication, this seems quite appropriate. Where it is useful, I also qualify IT by the adjective “digital,” since older technologies such as writing also involve information processing, storage and communication. In some cases, when discussing mobile phones, it is more appropriate to use ICT.

Note that, to the extent that India is providing intermediate goods or services in its software exports, the situation is more complex than that of standard trade theory, where only final goods are traded.

See Lipsey et al. (1998) for a detailed survey and examination of the concept, as well as the other pieces in Helpman (1998). A complementarity leads to a particular kind of externality: see Ray (1998, pp. 114–115).

Thus vertical complementarities are related to the older idea of linkages, with the downstream impact being a forward linkage, and the feedback being a backward linkage. See Basu (1997) and Ray (1998) for references and further discussion.

There are, of course, relatively few truly large firms by international standards, including TCS, Infosys and Wipro.

The earlier failure of the “Simputer” serves as a warning about actually succeeding in domestic manufacturing with sufficient scale to keep costs down. East Asian manufacturers have, in fact, begun to produce better quality tablet computers at a price not much above the target price for the Aakaash.

Here one should note that predicting the pattern of production and trade of differentiated products such as automobiles does not rely on standard comparative advantage models. Nevertheless, at an intuitive level, the statement seems justified.

Alternatively, the effect of the growth of the IT sector on the provision of technical education would be an example of a “backward linkage”. In either case, there is a complementarity at work.

See Singh (2007) for a more extensive discussion of the potential role of IT in India’s rural development. The discussion in the current paper also draws on Singh (2004).

See Singh (2008a, b) for a model that develops this point formally. The original insight that transaction costs can lead to certain markets being non-operational is due to Romer (1994), but he emphasizes tariffs rather than internal transaction costs in his formal analysis.

MSSRF is the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation, which operates 12 Village Knowledge Centers in Pondicherry, a Union Territory south of Chennai (Dossani et al. 2005; Parthasarathy et al. 2005). DHAN is the Development of Humane Action Foundation, which operated 37 kiosks as of June 2004, in Madurai district of Tamil Nadu (Parthasarathy et al. 2005).

ITC has several thousand kiosks spread across multiple Indian states. EID Parry has been involved with several dozen kiosks in Nellikuppam district in Tamil Nadu.

More general discussions of local language content issues for ICTs in India are in Kumar (2004) and Sangal et al. (2004). Much of the problem lies with poor standard setting at the state government level. Thus, in Punjabi, there are multiple, independently and privately developed fonts, with varying keyboard mappings, making it difficult for ICT based written communication in the language. In contrast, East Asian countries such as Japan and Korea have developed standard fonts and modified dual-language keyboards as national standards.

Shared mobile phones are very effective for certain types of communication, and their capabilities obviously keep expanding. Indeed, smart phones with larger screens and tablets of various sizes have created a spectrum of IT devices with communication capabilities. However, for many types of information access, where quantity and ease of reading and processing matter more than mobility, the use of desktop PCs may be more efficient. In addition, a desktop PC with printer is able to provide a wide range of services that are not communication-related, but just involve processing of information. Nevertheless, mobile phones can be sufficient and significant for conveying basic information such as market prices in multiple locations, in advance of travel to a particular market. See Eggleston et al. (2002), and Jensen (2007).

The most famous example of childrens’ ability to adapt to and learn from new technology is the NIIT “hole-in-wall” experiment, in which a computer was made accessible to slum children through a hole in a wall, without any prior instruction or information. The children rapidly developed their own technology vocabulary and learned to make effective use of the computer for game playing, for example (http://www.niitholeinthewall.com/home.htm).

However much one may decry English language imperialism, and push the importance of local language content, it is true that spoken English competency is an important asset in the Indian workforce, and paternalism or nationalism should not deny rural Indians access to this skill. One major problem with rural teaching of English is the lack of proficiency of the teachers themselves—video or audio modules for spoken English provide an obvious and cost-effective relaxation of this supply constraint.

A somewhat different example of relaying local information is provided by the application of IT for disease monitoring in tsunami-affected districts of Tamil Nadu (Voxiva 2008). The question arises in this case as to the benefits of data transmission versus simple voice messages. The benefits of the former seem to be accuracy and richness of the information that can be transmitted, and ease of integrating new information into existing databases.

This section draws heavily from Sharma and Singh (2013).

These percentages are calculated by the authors from National Accounts data from RBI (2012).

A detailed discussion of services is beyond the scope of the current paper: Singh (2008a) provides an analysis of India’s service sector in relation to manufacturing and their respective roles in overall growth.

Both Chandra and Trilochan (2002) and Chandra (2009) emphasized weaknesses in supply chain management as a problem among Indian manufacturing firms.

This section draws heavily from Singh (2010).

Arora A, Athreye S (2002) The software industry and India’s economic development. Inf Econ Policy 14:253–273CrossRef

Bajpai P, Singh M (2005) The death of indian languages on the internet: the case of hindi, background paper. Indicus Analytics, New Delhi

Basu K (1997) Analytical development economics: the less developed economy revisited. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

Bresnahan T, Trajtenberg M (1995) General purpose technologies: “engines of growth”. J Econometrics 65:83–108CrossRef

Chandra P (2009) Competitiveness of indian manufacturing: findings of the third national manufacturing survey. IIMB research report no. RR-2009-01

Chandra P, Sastry T (2002) Competitiveness of Indian manufacturing: findings of the 2001 national manufacturing survey. Working paper no. 2002-09-04, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad

Ciccone A, Matsuyama K (1996) Start-up costs and pecuniary externalities as barriers to economic development. J Dev Econ 49:33–59CrossRef

Dossani R, Mishra DC, Jhaveri R (2005) Enabling ICT for rural India. Project report. Stanford University and National Informatics Centre, India

Economist (2005) The real digital divide, technology and development survey. The Economist, Mar 10th

Eggleston K, Jensen RT, Zeckhauser R (2002) Information and communication technologies, markets, and economic development. In: Kirkman G et al (eds) The global information technology report 2001–2002 readiness for the networked world. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 62–74

Gangopadhyay S, Singh MG, Singh N (2008) Waiting to connect: Indian IT revolution bypasses the domestic industry. Lexis-Nexis-Butterworth, New Delhi

Grossman G, Helpman E (1991) Innovation and growth in the global economy. MIT Press, Cambridge

Helpman E (1998) General purpose technologies and economic growth. MIT Press, Cambridge

Helpman E, Trajtenberg M (1998a) A time to sow and a time to reap: growth based on general purpose technologies, Chapter 3 in Helpman (1998)

Helpman E, Trajtenberg M (1998b) Diffusion of general purpose technologies, Chapter 4 in Helpman (1998)

Jensen R (2007) The digital provide: information (technology), market performance and welfare in the south indian fisheries sector. Q J Econ 122(3):879–924CrossRef

Kapur D (2002) The causes and consequences of India’s IT boom. India Rev 1(1):91–110CrossRef

Kapur D, Ramamurti R (2001) India’s emerging competitive advantage in services. Acad Manag Executive 15(2):20–31CrossRef

Kendall J, Singh N (2012) Internet kiosks in rural India: gender, caste and location. Rev Market Integr 4(1):1–43CrossRef

Kite G (2012) The impact of information technology outsourcing on productivity and output: new evidence from India. Procedia Econ Finance 1:239–248CrossRef

Kochhar K, Kumar U, Rajan R, Subramanian A, Tokatlidis I (2006) India’s pattern of development: what happened, what follows? J Monetary Econ 53(5):981–1019

Kochhar S, Dhanjal G (2004) From governance to e-governance: an initial assessment of some of India’s best projects. Technical report, Skoch Consultancy Services, New Delhi

Kochhar S, Dhanjal G (2005) From governance to e-governance: a second look at some of the country’s best projects. Technical report, Skoch Consultancy Services, New Delhi

Kremer M (1993) The O-ring theory of economic development. Q J Econ 108(3):551–575

Kumar H (2004) Science, technology and the politics of computers in indian languages. In Keniston K, Kumar D (eds) IT experience in India: bridging the digital divide, Chapter 8. Sage Publications, New Delhi, pp 140–161

Kuruvilla S, Dzenowagis J, Pleasant A, Dwivedi R, Murthy N, Samuel R, Scholtz M (2004) Digital bridges need concrete foundations: lessons from the health InterNetwork India, BMJ 2004;328:1193–1196 (15 May). doi:10.1136/bmj.328.7449.1193

Lipsey RG, Becker C, Carlaw K (1998) What requires explanation? Chapter 2 in Helpman (1998)

Matsuyama K (1995) Complementarities and cumulative processes in monopolistic competition. J Econ Lit 33(2):701–710

Milgrom P, Qian Y, Roberts J (1991) Complementarities, momentum, and the evolution of modern manufacturing. Am Econ Rev 81(2):84–88

Miller RR (2001) Leapfrogging? India’s information technology industry and the internet, IFC discussion paper no. 42, May, The World Bank, Washington, DC

NASSCOM-McKinsey (2002) Report: strategies to achieve Indian IT industry’s aspiration. NASSCOM, New Delhi

NMCC-NASSCOM (2010) A roadmap to enhance ICT adoption in the Indian manufacturing sector. NASSCOM, New Delhi

NMP (2012) National manufacturing policy, ministry of commerce and industry, department of industrial policy and promotion. Government of India, New Delhi

Panagariya A (2008) India: the emerging giant. Oxford University Press, New York

Parthasarathy B, Punathambekar A, Kiran GR, Guntuku DK, Srinivasan J, Kumar R (2005) Information and communications technologies for development: a comparative analysis of impacts and costs from india. Project report, department of information technology, ministry of communications and information technology, Government of India

Pritchett L, Woolcock M (2004) Solutions when the solution is the problem: arraying the disarray in development. World Dev 32(2):191–212CrossRef

Quibria MG, Tschang T (2001) Information and communication technology and poverty: an Asian perspective. ADB Institute working paper series no. 12, Jan

Ray Debraj (1998) Development economics. Princeton University Press, Princeton

Rivera-Batiz Luis A, Romer Paul M (1991a) Economic integration and endogenous growth. Q J Econ 106(2):531–555CrossRef

Rivera-Batiz LA, Romer PM (1991b) International trade with endogenous technological change. Eur Econ Rev 35(4):971–1004CrossRef

Romer Paul (1994) New goods, old theory, and the welfare costs of trade restrictions. J Dev Econ 43(1):5–38CrossRef

Sangal R, Bharat A, Chaitanya V (2004) Collaborative creation of digital resources in Indian languages. In: Keniston K, Kumar D (eds) IT experience in India: bridging the digital divide, Chapter 9. Sage Publications, New Delhi, pp 162–168

Shah A (2006) Improving governance using large IT systems. In Narayan S (ed) Documenting reform: case studies from India. Macmillan, New Delhi

Sharma S, Singh N (2013) Information technology and productivity in Indian manufacturing. India Policy Forum 9:187–229

Singh N (2002) Information technology as an engine of broad-based growth in India. In: Banerjee P, Richter F-J (eds) In the future of India and Indian business. London: Palgrave/Macmillan, pp. 34–57

Singh N (2004) Information technology and rural development in India. In: Debroy B, Khan AU (eds) Integrating the rural poor into markets. Academic Foundation, New Delhi, pp 221–246

Singh N (2007) ICTs and rural development in India. Report to RGICS and IDEI (I), New Delhi

Singh N (2008a) Transaction costs, information technology and development. India Growth Dev Rev 1(2):212–236CrossRef

Singh N (2008b) Services-led industrialization in India: assessment and lessons. In: O’Connor David, Kjöllerström Mónica (eds) Industrial development for the 21st century: sustainable development perspectives. Macmillan, New York, pp 235–291

Singh N (2010) Expenditure governance and information technology: assessing India’s situation and potential. India Rev 9(2):107–139CrossRef

Voxiva (2008) Tamil Nadu Health Watch, UN Public Administration Network, available at http://www.unpan.org/Directories/ICTApplications/tabid/826/ctl/ProductDetail/mid/2182/ProductID/17/language/en-US/Default.aspx, accessed July 8, 2015

Weitzman M (1998) Recombinant growth. Q J Econ 113(2):331–360CrossRef

Woodall P (2000) The new economy. The Economist, Sept 23, Survey p. 6

Titel: Information Technology and Its Role in India’s Economic Development: A Review
verfasst von: Nirvikar Singh
Verlag: Springer India
Buch: Development in India
Print ISBN: 978-81-322-2540-9

Electronic ISBN: 978-81-322-2541-6

Copyright-Jahr: 2016
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-2541-6_14

Springer Professional

Abstract

Bitte loggen Sie sich ein, um Zugang zu Ihrer Lizenz zu erhalten.

Sie haben noch keine Lizenz? Dann Informieren Sie sich jetzt über unsere Produkte:

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"

Springer Professional "Technik"

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Premium Partner