Realising the dream of Connectivity and Growth for Rural India

India has some notable success stories in promoting rural connectivity. One example is Google India’s Internet Saarthi programme (in partnership with Tata Trust)

What is common between Elastic Run, Meesho, Udaan and Dealshare?

Apart from the fact that they are Unicorns, these organisations have bet big on the rural India connectivity and commerce story. Urban elite studied the power of rural consumers mainly through the book ‘Fortune at the bottom of the pyramid’ by CK Prahalad but for long, this massive segment of almost a billion was ignored, even pilloried.

Covid pandemic recalibrated a lot of the status-quo across a shell-shocked world. One of them was organisations and institutions understanding the power of remote work and by extension, the importance of countrywide connectivity.

India has some notable success stories in promoting rural connectivity. One example is Google India’s Internet Saarthi programme (in partnership with Tata Trust). This programme has benefited more than 22 million rural women and due to which male vs

female participation in rural connectivity has got somewhat normalised.

India is at the cusp of a digital revolution and our government in partnership with telecom operators, service providers, regulators, industry, and academia has lined up several key initiatives to turbocharge India’s rural connectivity at breakneck speed. Some of them are outlined below:

• Focus on Digital Infrastructure: World’s biggest rural broadband project Bharatnet has set up an ambitious target to provide fast, reliable, affordable, and scalable broadband access to all 2.5 Lakhs Gram Panchyats in the country through a mesh of interconnected OFC’s spanning lakhs of kilometres to realise the vision of Digitally connected India. 1,77,550 Gram Panchayats (GPs) have been made service ready till June 2022. The scope of BharatNet has been extended up to all inhabited villages beyond GPs in the country by 2025.

• Gigbit ambition: Once the basic infra highway for internet access is laid, it’s paramount that this highway is able to support fast bandwidth of rich data (Audio, video, streaming, LIVE calls etc) and this is where the National Broadband Mission (NBM) comes in. Imagine, entire rural India getting speeds of upto 50 Mbps (by 2024-25) which as of now we get in top urban cities in the country. NBM aims to bridge digital divide, accelerate the growth of digital communications infra, empower and facilitate digital empowerment & inclusion and provide unbiased, non-discriminatory, and universal access to broadband to all and sundry.

• Enabling policies for fast 5G rollouts: It’s important to note that the recent changes done by the DoT to the ROW Act 2022 has been highly welcomed by everyone as that would ensure seamless, frictionless and uniform roll out of 5G services across the country through better coordination between all the stakeholders for permission and deployment of digital infrastructure across the country.

India’s overall digital economy prowess has a direct impact on its share of Indian GDP. A world bank study shows that a 10% increase in broadband penetration translates to a 1.4% growth of GDP in the developing countries. This data alone should be the harbinger of the exciting times ahead of us. In the last 5 years, Internet’s contribution to our GDP increased from 5.6% to 16%

However, not all is as good as it looks. Even though the above parameters give a very utopian outlook of our Digital and Rural Connectivity story, there are, however, chinks in this shiny armour. Rural India internet usage is confined to browsing of social media platforms along with watching videos/listening to audios, however, most of the districts still lag far behind when it comes to online shopping, banking and digital payments - use cases that will take rural communities closer to parity. Government has been actively working to create a level playing field for our rural audience, however it needs to quickly address the following concerns on war footing to ensure we see a prosperous, connected and a fully empowered India.

Agile and ongoing addressal of Policy shortfalls Cracking the code for scale and affordability for rural connectivity I Innovative approaches for overall digital and financial literacy

Our Ex-President and India’s missile man – Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam famously said: “Smart habitation is an area where cities and villages live and work in harmony and where the rural-urban divide has been reduced to a thin line”

The time has come for us to collectively realise this ideal….

Praveen Cherian

Chief Executive Officer-Global Services Business at STL

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