The developmental promise of information and communications technology in India

How do developing nations react to rapid conversion into information societies? This article examines the growth of information and communications technology in India, with the state’s universal internet access policy (part of its ‘IT for All’ initiative) at the center of its investigation. The rapid development of technology and access to telecommunications over the next decade is inevitable in India, and what the universe of ‘universal access’ will be is open to speculation. India’s human development, especially the geographic structure of education and economic opportunities, threaten to create a divisive threshold. Since the organization of the information society is reliant principally on skill and knowledge networks, the benefits system may exponentially increase, and perhaps entrench, the gap between the haves and the have-nots if the speed of basic development does not catch up with that of technology spread. Will the factor of relative disempowerment outweigh the benefits of ‘IT for