INDIAN INDEPENDENCE

India in IT Field Since Independence

• India celebrated the 60th anniversary of its independence from British rule Wednesday in a triumphant mood, with many here feeling the country is finally taking its rightful place as a major global player.
  
  Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said "I assure you that for each one of you, and for our country, the best is yet to come," on the eve of his traditional Independence Day speech.
  
  
  IT in India
  Information technology essentially refers to the digital processing, storage and communication of information of all kindsTherefore, IT can potentially be used in every sector of the economy. The true impact of IT on growth and productivity continues to be a matter of debate, even in the United States, which has been the leader and largest adopter of IT.However, there is no doubt that the IT sector has been a dynamic one in many developed countries, and India has stood out as a developing country where IT, in the guise of software exports, has grown dramatically, despite the country’s relatively low level of income and development. An example of IT’s broader impact comes from the case of so-called IT-enabled services, a broad category covering many different kinds of data processing and voice interactions that use some IT infrastructure as inputs, but do not necessarily involve the production of IT outputs. India’s figures for the size of the IT sector typically include such services.
  A popular alternative is ICT, for information and communications technology: the World Bank, for example, favors this term.
  To give a sampling of research in the US, David (2000) emphasizes the lag with which any new technology affects productivity; Gordon (2000) offers a skeptical view of the impact of IT on productivity, arguing that the empirical evidence indicates that the impact is narrow and limited; Jorgenson, in the most comprehensive analysis, finds that IT has contributed significantly to total factor productivity growth (TFPG) in the US. Of course, higher TFPG implies higher overall growth, ceteris paribus.
  Indicators of the strength of India’s software export capabilities include the depth of its base, and the breadth of its global reach. There are over 2,500 Indian software exporters, and while only the top five (TCS, Infosys, Wipro, Satyam and HCL) are – or are approaching the status of – global brands, they together account for only about 35% of software exports.The United States remains by far the largest market for India’s software exports, its share of India’s software exports being 63%, with Europe coming in at 26%, and Japan and the rest of the world accounting for the remaining 11% (NASSCOM, 2002). Individual firms and organizations such as NASSCOM have shown themselves to be adept at targeting markets with substantial growth potential, such as Germany, and the reputations built in exporting to the US are proving important.
  
  IT-enabled services (ITES) have shown the strongest growth in the last two years. They include a variety of types of service, ranging from customer call centers, to accounting services and other business process outsourcing, to GIS and engineering services. Thus the required degree of technical sophistication of the workforce and the level of use of IT can vary widely. In fact, the three categories I have mentioned make up most of India’s ITES exports, with the first two showing high growth and representing over 60% of the total of Rs. 71 billion.
  These figures are calculated from data in NASSCOM (2002), and exclude IT enabled services.
  
  
  Table 1: Falling Costs of Computing ($)
  
  Costs of computing 1970 1999
  1 Mhz of processing power 7,601 0.17
  1 megabit of storage 5,257 0.17
  1 trillion bits sent 150,000 0.12
  
  This significant boost to the country's Internet plans can be accounted to the Government, which has announced several landmark decisions that have helped increase Internet penetration in India. The Internet survey conducted in 68 cities / towns in India in 2002 (accounting for over 92 percent of the total Internet users in the country) on Internet Usage Trends by different agencies came up with some interesting findings:


• More than 200 cities and towns in India have Internet connectivity.


• As of Sep 2002, there was a PC base of 6.5 million PCs. Out of these, there were more than 4.3 million machines that had Pentium II and above processors (i.e. machines which could be effectively used for Internet).


• More than 120 private ISPs would be fully operational by June 31, 2001 (out of the projected 500 licenses to be given by that date).


• At least 12 private international gateways for Internet are expected in the same period. Seven private international gateways are already operational by December 2000.


• More than 86 percent of top 100 corporate companies (who responded to the survey) have endorsed the Internet and e-commerce as being an integral part of their corporate strategic framework for next year.


• The capital cities (New Delhi and other state capitals) today account for 79 percent of Internet connections across the country.


• More than 81% of PC sales in financial year 2001 were driven by the need to access the Internet


• 91% of India's corporate websites are located overseas.


• There has been a substantial increase in Internet Access through all ages. More than 11% of all 40 year olds access the Internet now. The most widespread usage is found among the 18-24 year age group.


• The male:female ratio of Internet Users has changed from 82% of males to 18% of females in June 1999, to 74% males to 26% females at the time of this study.


• Approximately 16,00,000 households are connected to the Internet.


• Of all Internet Users, the corporate/professional segment forms the largest at 43% followed by students at 38% .


• More than half (59.2%) of the Internet user population use it for information seeking purposes, 11.3% use it for education purposes and 8.2% use it for entertainment.
  
  
  Software Technology Parks Of India
  Software Technology parks of India - Thiruvananthapuram (STPI-T) came into existence in 1992. Since then, more than 240 companies have been registered and 87 companies are exporting software regularly to countires like US, UK, Japan & Germany and middle East. Contribution from STPI has been mainly towards extraordinary support provided to the software industry and its fast responsiveness. It has helped in changing the trend from onsite to offshore development by providing state-of-the-art data communication facility through dedicated satellite earth station at various STPI centres.It has six local IT centers located at Kozhikode, Kollam, Kottayam, Kochi, Trishur and Palayad. Its software exports in 2002 crossed US $ 200 Million.
  
  INDIAN SPACE RESEARCH ORGANIZATION
  
  Indian space program driven by vision of Dr Vikram Sarabhai considered as the father of Indian Space Program. Main objective of space program includes development of satellites, launch vehicles, Sounding Rockets and associated ground systems. Crossed several major milestones. Experimental phase included Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (SITE), Satellite Telecommunication Experiment (STEP), remote sensing application projects, satellites like Aryabhata, Bhaskara, Rohini and APPLE and launch vehicles, SLV-3 and ASLV. Present operational space systems include Indian National Satellite (INSAT) for tele-communication, television broadcasting, meteorology and disaster warning and Indian Remote Sensing Satellite (IRS) for resources monitoring and management. INSAT-2E, The latest of the INSAT-2 series of satellites built by ISRO, is a multi-purpose satellite for telecommunication, television broadcasting and meteorological services. The satellite is located at 83 degrees east longitude in geostationary orbit. INSAT-2E carries seventeen transponders-12 operating in the normal C-band frequency and 5 in the lower extend C-band. Seven of the normal C-band transponders have wide beam coverage and the remaining have zonal coverage.INSAT-2E is launched by European Arian Launch Vehicle to a Geosynchronous transfer orbit with a perigee of 200 km and an apogee of 35,980 km.