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Chatty Indians have embraced the mobile phone, but many still shrug at the PC
12 Nov 2007
Or so says The Economist, in an excellent article dated November 8, 2007.
“India’s adventurous phone-owners have not embraced the computer or the internet in the same spirit. The country adds more mobile-phone users in a month (8.3m in August) than it adds PCs in a year (about 6m). Lehman Brothers calculates that this year India will have 24 PCs per 1,000 people. China has three times that figure. Moreover, despite the pride India takes in its IT firms, it is also a surprisingly “offline” country. By August 2007 it had only 2.6m broadband connections, generously defined. China has over 50m.
In Hyderabad and suburban Sangareddi, Jonathan Donner of Microsoft Research studied more than 300 small informal businesses—from cobblers and locksmiths up to rice-dealers and photocopyists—employing five or fewer people. In his sample, only 13% had a computer (only 23% had ever tried one) and 39% lacked even a phone. Three-quarters of those without a phone plan to get one. But ask people if they plan to get a PC, he says, and they will shrug.
It is better to talk
Are they right to? The spread of PCs is not always a sign of economic vitality. A recent World Bank survey of almost 2,000 Indian retailers found that about 19% used computers. But one of their big reasons for doing so was to skirt intrusive labour regulation: only these laws made a computer more attractive than a clerk.
One of the enterprises Mr Donner visited collects scrap paper for recycling. It does not have heavy information-processing needs, Mr Donner points out; a logbook does the job. But many firms that can eschew computers do have communication needs. Without a phone they “cannot communicate faster than they can walk”.
Low use of the PC is not necessarily under-use: many Indians may be right to shrug, relying instead on store-clerks and logbooks. But the slow spread of computing may also reflect timorous consumers and sleepy businesses. The diffusion of technology often counts for more than its invention. But perhaps there are inventive ways to aid diffusion.
Source
The Economist - November 8, 2007