Information And Communication Technology (Ict) And India’s Development: Achievements And Challenges Ahead | Diganta Kumar Das & K. Narayanan

India has witnessed a rousing start in the IT/IT-enabled services (ITES), with harboring well on an abundant, high quality and cost-effective pool of skilled knowledge workers, supportive governmental policies, improved infrastructure and locational advantages. Today India is at the forefront of this sector along with the leading countries of the world. According to the NASSCOM, during 2002-03 the IT/ITES segment grew by sixty-five percent and the revenues from this sector rose by more than sixty percent. With this current trend, it is expected that revenues obtained from ITES will rise to $17 billion and would provide employment to 1.1 million people by 2010. Although, today India is shining in this sector but studies and assessment of other implications of this development shows that the benefits have been confined to limited urban areas of a few developed states. The poor states have not been able to take the advantages of this ?digital economy? and the result is not only a rural-urban digital divide but also a new urban-urban digital divide among different states. Therefore, the need of the hour is to rethink, revise and renovate the policies, infrastructure and strategy to face the challenges ahead, which is imperative to manage and spread this rapid growth while retaining productivity and quality. The paper attempts to bring forth suggestions, based on existing literature and studies for uniform development and growth.