[Air-l] Internet Usage in India

[Michael Baron]

Information literacy and ISP infrustructure are becoming suprisingly
impressive in India (particularly in some of the States). For example back
in the early 2000s, in the state of Anterpredesh, the state government
introduced a government-funded program to make sure that every single
village has an Internet connection.

Also, around 2003 together with my co-authors, i have carrried out a
comperative study of government Websites in India and Russia. To our great
surprise ("surprise" refers to Russia-born me being embarassed and my
India-born co-author rejoicing :) ). The Indian sites outperformed the
Russian Websites significantly!


On 4/17/07, Frederick Noronha <fred at bytesforall.org> wrote:
>
> Right. Rediff is popular because it's a local ISP (I don't like it
> though, as it keeps throwing a lot of pop-ups at you). Cybercafes are
> ubiquitous in urban areas, and you would be surprised how many of
> these are around. I guess there would be more cybercafes in an Indian
> city than in its Western equivalent (perhaps because of the low access
> of 'personal' computers at homes and in offices).
>
> In some parts of India, specially in the South where education and
> social indices are better, you could be surprised to see a significant
> proportion (no figures!) of young women busy at the cybercafes.
> Higher-speed internet access (by local standards) is available at
> fairly affordable rates of about 50 Euro cents per hour.
>
> One stumbling block has been the hassle of using Indian language
> solutions (in local scripts) in computing. Apart from proprietorial
> software solutions, some groups like the IndicComputing network have
> been working to change this, with mixed results.
>
> Indian figures, like those in many so-called 'developing countries'
> can often widely, so it might be hard to say what is the number of Net
> users here. This has been further affected by lobby goups which make
> varying claims (either to promote their interests, lobby for hardware
> sales or whatever).
>
> Take a look at what one network is saying --  (usual disclaimers, use
> with caution):
>
> Internet & Mobile Association of India (IAMAI)
> Indian online gaming market touches Rs 210 million: IAMAI study
> Indiantelevision.com ... 2004 Internet & Mobile Association of India,
> Disclaimer | Copyright.
> www.iamai.in/
>
> Rgds, FN
>
> On 17/04/07, Kath O'Donnell <aliak77 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > from a personal perspective, when I was in India last year, the guys
> > at work used http://in.rediff.com/ and yahoo.com a bit. there were
> > lots of ads for it also (tv and billboards). also the arranged
> > marriage sites were popular with those looking for marriages. I can't
> > remember the site name in particular that a workmate showed me but
> > they had profiles - photos, info about the person, caste, what they
> > were interested in, salary, education, manglik status etc (I have an
> > audio recording of him explaining it to me - can send u the link if
> > that helps as I or he might have mentioned the site name. have a video
> > of it somewhere too). a few music people I met used myspace for
> > networking. the guys at sarai (sarai.net), a new media/arts org might
> > be able to offer suggestions - especially if there's any research on
> > it. perhaps even contact the newspapers there (eg Times of India) as
> > there were articles in the paper about internet usage and how people
> > were using it so they might have stats?
> --
> FN M: 0091 9822122436 P: +91-832-240-9490 (after 1300IST please)
> http://fn.goa-india.org  http://fredericknoronha.wordpress.com
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