Subramanium Vutha with contributions from Radhika Nayak

While the internet holds the promise of bringing in unprecedented change in most areas of our lives, it is important that there is vigorous debate from the Indian perspective, says Subramanium Vutha as he examines the impact of the internet on two areas – economic policy and public governance

	Economic Policy
	Public Governance.

Economic Policy:
The current focus on the new economy is a of hype and is making our economy dependant on the US and ‘H1-B’ visas
- Jairam Ramesh, economic advisor, Congress (I)

The government must wake up and provide the infrastructure required by Internet companies to succeed. It should keep in mind that dotcoms create jobs. They also help to spin off other industries which are needed to support the dotcoms.
- BV Jagadeesh, co-founder and strategic advisor, Exodus Communications

The information technology revolution is being touted as leading to many benefits and possibilities for economic growth. One of the main aspects that has been studied internationally is the impact of ‘informatisation’ on economic performance. Typically, this refers to the potential benefits of IT in various domains by improving productivity, for instance by significantly reducing the cost of many transactions, increasing the efficiency of management, increasing competition, and increasing consumer choice, convenience and satisfaction. Overall, increases in employment, technological diffusion, and increased foreign capital flows are seen as economy-wide benefits.

However, in India, it does appear that most mainstream businesses, business executives and professionals have yet to seriously consider the impact of the Internet on their respective domains. Further, it has been argued that for a developing country like India, focusing on an IT-led growth strategy would lead to a large majority of the country becoming irrelevant to the major growth-fuelling processes. The recent dotcom bubble burst and the shake-up in the Internet economy has only highlighted the need for introspection.

While the Internet brings the potential to add many new dimensions to existing areas of business and non-business activities, it is imperative that mainstream domain experts participate vigorously in debating and disseminating the Indian perspective on such issues. It is in this regard that we would like to solicit your views:
What do you believe to be the factors, if any, that would lead to the IT industry positively affecting your domain?
Do you believe the impact of the Internet is restricted to e-commerce or could it affect information flows across a wide range of ‘old economy’ sectors in India?
What do you perceive are the risks that would accompany an Internet led growth strategy for India?
What do you think are important directions for further research and investigation?

Public Governance:
We plan to set the pace for e-governance for other departments of the government. We are hopeful that by the end of the year, it would be possible to take all decisions electronically. This would herald a revolution for others to follow.
- ministry of information technology, Government of India

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are changing the power equations based on access and control to information and knowledge. They are leading to a fundamental shift in way information and knowledge flows, is stored and gets used. An interesting question is whether ICTs can change the old ways of Governance. In a democracy like India, ICTs have the potential to create avenues and opportunities to enable people to participate more meaningfully in the governance processes. Equally importantly, they provide ways to enhance the efficiency of the quality of government service delivery. Some mechanisms are as follows:
Lower administrative costs releasing the savings for "front-line" support: ICTs allow for a significant reduction of information handling costs, and compliance costs. In particular, ICTs enable more data (e.g., dates of birth or changes of address) to be shared between different information systems, thereby reducing the number of times the data have to be collected.

Faster and more appropriate responses to requests and queries, including the provision of services outside normal office hours: ICTs allow direct access to transaction or customer accounts held in different parts of government, especially for street-level public services. Thus, individual cases could also be processed more quickly.

Access to all departments and levels of government from any location: ICTs support the development of more flexible, convenient ways for citizens to access public services. For example, governments are developing direct online round-the-clock facilities for transacting business such as welfare claims, tax assessment, visa applications, and license renewals. These could prevent fraud or misuse of public services and benefits, resulting in increased public confidence in welfare and taxation services.

Better governance capability: ICTs enable governments to harvest more data from operational systems, thus increasing the quality of feedback to managerial and policy levels. Governments are also able to make more information available to citizens and support new kinds of online communication between policymakers, elected representatives, individual citizens, or organized lobbies. In these ways, ICTs could enhance the steering capability of modern governance.

Assistance to local and national economies by facilitating the government-to-business interface: This could result in improved services to remote rural areas and enhanced emergency-support services.

	Do you believe that the role for ICTs in governance outlined above is overstated?
	What major hurdles do you perceive in making governance more effective through ICTs?
	Do you think this could lead to an undermining of political control?
	Do you think ICT-based governance is an inevitable process or one that would require a self-reforming government?

We welcome responses to the issues raised here. Please mail your comments to these address: ylobo@schoolnetindia.com
Radhika.Nayak@schoolnetindia.com