About 72% Indians do not know what Internet is. As a plain fact it can seem surprising, especially since India has been reporting the highest rate of growth in Internet usage. I am sure the growth will continue, in fact flourish as times come. However, it is still a very limited number of people that derive value from Internet. I wonder if the answer would be any different if we asked them about a computer.
India is highly polarized, in terms of education and use of technology. The rural life is more agrarian based, which is yet to find its roots in the virtual world. Even in the urban areas, which contains a lot of migrants from rural areas, the majority is still struggling to lead their everyday life and get basic education. In light of such things it is quite understandable that they might have hardly come across the term Internet. Or even if they did it would simply be ignored. Like we filter stuff that does not interest us or is not useful to us.
Ironically, the Internet usage can only grow in India. The mobiles are fueling it, government organizations are slowly waking up to the fact that Internet can be used effectively for broadcasting information. People are picking it up, but they still do not constitute the majority. Internet can be truly accepted if there are more indigenous solutions that cater to local problems rather than clones of already popular websites. If you consider the rural areas, there is hardly any infrastructure to publish information, whether official or not. Internet can really help here.
The number of Indians in the cyber world is increasing. However, considering the population, more are still away from it. They are away either because they cannot see any value in it, or because they are not educated enough to see value in it.
April 28th, 2007 at 2:48 pm
[...] the skepticism comes out of the realization that the majority still do not use the Internet. Not because an Internet connection is not available, but because electricity is not consistently [...]