Year: 2014 | Month: September | Volume 59 | Issue 3
Pattern of Inter-State Digital Divide in India
Kawaljeet Kaur
Neena
DOI:10.5958/0976-4666.2014.00006.0
Abstract:
ICT revolution worldwide has brought immense opportunities in all the sectors of the economy. However, optimum utilization of information and communication technologies requires infrastructure development and human capital investments, overcoming bottlenecks of which will be a challenging task. One of the main challenges is the gap between the information ‘haves’ and information ‘have-nots’ what we call the digital divide. In this context, the paper investigates the extent of ICT diffusion in India and also evaluates inter-state technology divide. ICT Diffusion indices have been constructed to measure ICT diffusion in different states of India. For this purpose, Obricom (2003) methodology has been used. The results of ICT diffusion index indicate that Kerala, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka are the top ICT performers and Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Orissa, Assam are the poor performers. In order to evaluate different determinants of inter-state telecom development, pooled regression analysis was used by taking data at three points of time, i.e., 1991, 2001 and 2011. The results of regression analysis show that telecom sector growth has been positively affected by population and per capita NSDP and policy variable indicating telecom sector liberalization.
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