With growing disparities between rich and poor, India needs to evolve science and technology strategies for rural areas, which provide new and smart choices for the most deprived sections of society

Innovation and infusion of technological change have historically been major drivers of development and increase in human welfare. In the US, economists, particularly in the last century, carried out detailed analysis of the role of technology in promoting economic growth. In developing countries like India, such an assessment has not been attempted adequately, possibly because the task would be much more complex in our setting. The Indian economy is much too diverse, defying easy aggregation, largely because of enormous disparities and a large component of non-market activities.

Second, technological choices faced by various sections of society in India today are vastly different from what existed in the developed world during the 20th century. In today’s world, the place of information technology and flows of knowledge are much more extensive than was the case in the previous century. In India, for instance, the major expansion of mobile telephone usage has changed the scenario substantially in just the last 10 years. The country’s mobile phone subscriber base has now crossed one billion users, of which very soon a large number will graduate to the use of smart phones. It is anticipated that India would soon be crossing the 200 million target of smart phone users. Significantly, China already has over 500 million users of smart phones. 

The vision of a country’s leadership on technology issues can be a major determinant of changes that actually take place. When Rajiv