Ten years of the Internet in India have brought about nothing short of a revolution. Starting as an urban phenomenon, it has now spread deep into many rural areas, and given a boost to the economy, society and governance. Subimal Bhattacharjee surveys the scene.

When we celebrated Independence Day this year, we also achieved another important milestone—the completion of a decade of Internet service in India. While there are no celebrations for the same, there are various facets of this period that need to be highlighted. India has been perceived as growing in stature and economy by the global community and one of the pillars of such global optimism has been the unflinching role of the Indian information technology sector of which the Internet has been a fundamental part and will remain so.

The passage of the Information Technology Act in October 2000 gave a fillip and legal sanctity to efforts to spread e-commerce in the country. The Act was a landmark one because, for the first time, apart from facilitating e-trade, it also allowed the introduction of digital signatures.

From a subscriber growth of 0.01 million in 1995, it has now crossed well past six million subscribers, although the number of users would be more than double that figure. And the numbers are growing by the day. From a medium that was unknown just a decade ago to the popularity that it has acquired today, the Internet is nothing short of a revolution even in this country. It will be more revolutionary in the near future when more and more basic applications go online via the medium. The potential of the medium is tremendous both in terms of reach and efficiency. For instance, when the Community information Centre (CIC) project was being implemented in the northeast region, the Internet ensured the electricity connection in many villages which still had to be traversed by foot.

The Internet offers many advantages to the common man. While the medium’s original popularity in India, as in other parts of the world, has been the possibility of sending and receiving electronic mails, commonly known as e-mails, there has been a regular introduction of application services which have become popular in their own rights in no time.

E-mails have revolutionised communication across industries, educational and health institutions and individuals in terms of speed and cost.

Today, over 61 per cent of users access the Internet from schools, colleges, offices and cyber cafes while 27 per cent use home connections. Within no time, chatting, multimedia applications and even e-commerce have caught up. Today more and more people are using chat rooms for communicating with their near and dear ones. Similarly, Internet telephony has become a very common application with many Indians who use the facility to talk to relatives abroad. Many people have started banking, trading in shares and paying utility bills online.

The ICICI demat site is one of the most popular online trading sites. More and more people are going to the Internet to shop and buy online. The absence of geographical constraints and easy use have offered various advantages as compared to the difficulties faced when performing the same tasks in the physical world.

e-choupal project

There have been quite a few reasons why the Internet has proliferated faster in India than anyone could have thought of. First it started as an urban phenomenon and even today, urban India accounts for 79 per cent of the connectivity. However, the ongoing concentration on broadband and wireless connectivity deployment will change the scenario drastically in the next couple of years. Already some rural projects with the help of the Internet are a success. The e-choupal project of the ITC is popular with farmers in many states. Similarly the Rural Internet Service Initiative (RISI) of the BSNL and the setting up of one lakh Common Services Centres, as envisaged by the Department of Information Technology, of the Central Government, should make the Internet popular in the villages. Secondly, India’s economy that still hinges significantly on the rural sector is already seeing optimal changes with the diffusion of the Internet across the country.

The elimination of unscrupulous middlemen from the procurement and the delivery system because of the Internet medium will help many farmers and, at the same time, give them a global audience. Governance, which has been shoddy over the years, will get a boost with the introduction of e-governance that is only possible with the help of the Internet. Today e-governance has the potential of delivering citizen services optimally by eliminating corruption and saving of lot of valuable time, both for the officials and the citizens. The Internet will also enable the shedding of red tape in governance.

All these have already been demonstrated by the few projects that have been implemented in various states across the country. Some of the projects that deserve mention is Bhoomi in Karnataka, Friends in Kerala, e-seva and Smart Governance projects in Andhra Pradesh and also the CIC project in the northeastern states.

At the same time, the government policies and the role of the industry has also been quite favourable for the growth of the Internet. For the first four years, it was only the state-owned Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited (VSNL), which offered the Internet services. But in November 1998, private players were also allowed under a liberal regime where for the Internet Service Providers (ISP), there was no license fee, no restriction on the number of service providers, no tab on the tariffs to be charged and no bidding on the international gateways to be chosen. At present, ISPs are even allowed to provide Internet telephony services (since April 2002) and also their services through the Cable TV system, although a license fee of Re 1 has been introduced from November 1, 2003.

The creation of a separate Ministry of Information Technology in October 1999 and its clubbing with the Ministry of Communications has given the right boost to development of the Internet infrastructure and applications.

Fillip to e-commerce

The passage of the Information Technology Act in October 2000 gave a fillip and legal sanctity to efforts to spread e-commerce in the country. The Act was a landmark one because, for the first time, apart from facilitating e-trade, it also allowed the introduction of digital signatures and addressed a few of the cyber crimes. The Act also had provisions for looking at extra-territorial issues, as many of the problems of the Internet were trans-national in nature. The role of the industry in the form of Internet Service Providers of India (ISAPAI) and the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) has been very supportive. With the right polices and public-private cooperation, the Internet and related services got a boost in their fledgling years.

Cyber crimes

Where does the Internet go from here? The experience in the last 10 years has been very educating. While there is no doubt that the Internet will proliferate further and extend its reach to every nook and corner of the country, there is fear and apprehension about the negative features that will visit it. These negative features will be in the form of cyber attacks and network outrages.

Cyber crimes have increased manifold and various technological solutions as well as legal solutions are being actively considered to control them. Cyber attacks have matured from being individual attempts of pranksters to serious pursuits of criminal and terrorist syndicates. These are potentially dangerous for commercial networks, institutional networks and individual home users. Some of the common forms of cyber attacks that are creating havoc are hacking, spread of worms and viruses, distributed denial of service attacks and identity theft. Also many crimes committed in the physical world like extortion, stalking and cheating have attained a new dimension due to the Internet. Further pornography and child pornography have already become a menace as these can be easily communicated. Besides cyber crimes, there are other problems like spam that have assumed serious proportions.

Besides flooding mail boxes with bulk unwanted mail and clogging networks, today worm and virus writers are using spammers to launch attacks and at the same time create a network of zombie machines to launch much larger spoofed attacks.

The CII-PWC annual survey on information security for 2004 has shown that security breaches have been rising for three consecutive years and accounted for 83 per cent of respondents. Similarly, India being a current hot destination of various offshored-outsourcing projects is seeing attempts by negative elements to break into networks as well as commit social crimes like leaking data. Besides, there have been reports of ‘phising’ attacks being launched on bank customers to woo them into parting with their passwords and sensitive codes. In a short time, along with the good points that the Internet has facilitated, there has also been a meteoric rise of these criminal elements that have to be considered for any regulatory exercises.

Regulatory effort

The regulatory effort currently on in India has seen the move to revamp the IT Act 2000. An expert committee was appointed in January this year and it has just come out with its recommendations whereby many changes have been suggested. These measures need to be fine-tuned to make the grip of law tighter. Besides calling for making technology a neutral entity in IT deployments and regulatory approach, it has outlined the need for giving electronic contract the desired legal sanctity. It has also come out with changes to the offences and contraventions although much work will have to be done in Parliament before it can be passed. The role of civil societies and trade bodies also needs to be enhanced. NASSCOM has set the right tone but it needs support from all the stakeholders. At the same time, there are efforts on globally to regulate the cyberspace where India has been a worthy participant. The most visible exercise is the Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG), appointed by the UN Secretary-General, which has highlighted the issues of infrastructure and usage of the Internet which needs governance and offered four institutional models of governing the Internet on a global basis. This issue will be debated during the second phase of the World Summit to Information Society to be held in November this year in Tunisia.

The decision will have a global impact and the Indian cyberspace will also reflect the decision arrived at. The tempo of Indian participation in the WGIG needs to be carried on during the WSIS-II. Similarly nations are trying to find out a common strategy to address spam and cyber crimes.

The popularity of the Internet is bound to grow with more and more applications coming to the common man via the Internet in a cost-effective manner.

Already efforts are on to see that the digital divide is eliminated and with the support of multilateral organisations, effective programmes are being launched to see that computers are available cheaper, broadband is made available across the country like electricity and more and more people are oriented to use the Internet. The launch of more e-governance programmes will definitely be a boost.

Similarly more and more orientation to technology and secured computing environment will facilitate more
e-commerce and lift many people from their present state of passive onlookers. This decade has seen much growth; the next decade will see the transformation of the Internet medium as a handy tool of our
day-to-day life. A balanced Internet ecosystem will be the hallmark of future growth and towards that India will have a major role to play. Meanwhile, the consumers will await more good news both in terms of applications, technology and of course security. For that all the stakeholders will have much to work upon.

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