Maharashtra is the Most Internet-Ready State in India!

According to a recent report ‘Index of Internet Readiness of Indian States’ published by Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and Indicus Analytic, state of Maharashtra has been declared as the most Internet Ready state in India.

If you are wondering what “Internet Readiness” means – it essentially is is a composite index of ?ve components, i.e., e-Infrastructure index, e-Participation index, IT-Services and e-Governance index. The state that scores highest ratings combined on all indexes is termed as the most Internet ready state.

Karnataka and Gujarat come a close second and their on the index followed by Telangana and Tamil Nadu. The bottom four states in the rankings are all from Eastern region.

Here are the rankings of all the 21 large states.

Among the smaller smaller states Delhi has emerged as the top most state in terms of Internet readiness index, followed by Puducherry and Goa. Even in the smaller states, the northeastern States do not figure among the top three. Among the Union Territories, Chandigarh is ranked top in terms of Internet readiness index.

According to the report, Maharashtra scored particularly well in four out of the five components that make up for the index. Maharashtra did not score well in terms of infrastructure, but scored better than most states in all other four components giving them the highest ranking.

In case of Karnataka, participation of citizen in ICT environment is lower than Kerala and Gujarat, yet on account of the high contribution of IT to overall economy and success in e-government initiatives makes the state the second most e-Ready environment in the county.

The report used following parameters (among others) to rank various states:

Mobile subscribers per person above 15 years of age;

Share of private players in internet service providers;

Percentage of households using computer/ laptop with internet connection;

No. of e-transactions in Statutory and Non-Statutory services per lakh person above 15 years.

Our View

We are not too sure if this report gives an accurate representation of ground realities. In our view, the report wrongly gives equal importance to all the different components, which distorts the facts. For example, if the internet infrastructure is itself weak in particular state (like in case of Maharashtra), there is very little use of being on top on all the others.

Even though a state may be good in e-Participation or IT-Services or e-Governance, if the internet infrastructure is not present, no one will be able to access internet, which itself can become a bottleneck.

In our view e-infrastructure needs to be given highest weightage followed by participation, Governance and then other parameters to get an accurate understanding of how internet ready a state is.