Research in brief Telecommunications and new information technologies in India Social and cultural implications

Abstract. India has joined the league of rich industrial nations which have accorded top priority to the promotion of telecommunications (both basic telephone systems and value-added services) as well as the new information technologies. The economic policy of ’liberalization’ has resulted in a scramble among multinationals to invest in the Indian technology market. However, in the effort to promote these information technologies and the infrastructure nec-essary for their effective functioning, developing countries like India have overlooked the social and cultural consequences, besides the neglect of other priority sectors like education, employment generation, poverty alleviation, health and medical care, etc. The hope is that the new policy will stimulate industrial and economic growth. This paper takes a hard critical look at Indian government policy on telecommunications and the new information technologies, and the implications of such a policy for the social and cultural life of the nation. The critique takes the stance that information technologies are not a-historical or a-cultural and that they imagine on society in ways that aggravate social conflict, and challenge the cultural values of communities. The focus of the paper is on the pos-sible implications of the technologies for employment, privacy, surveillance, human relations, consumerism, and efficiency in administration