Sociology · Ch 11 — Globalisation and Social Change
Global Communications
Global Communications
The Revolution in Global Communications
The world has been transformed by dramatic advances in technology and telecommunications infrastructure. Homes and offices today are linked to the outside world through multiple channels: landline and mobile telephones, fax machines, digital and cable television, email, and the Internet. This connectivity, however, is not evenly distributed. The presence or absence of such links in different households and regions points to what is called the digital divide — the gap between those who have access to modern information and communication technology and those who do not.
Despite this divide, these technologies have enabled a remarkable compression of time and space. Two people on opposite sides of the planet — say, in Bengaluru and New York — can not only talk to each other but also instantly send documents and images, thanks to satellite technology. Globalisation has given rise to a network and media society, where information flows rapidly across borders.
To make this interconnectedness more efficient, the Government of India launched the Digital India programme. Its aim is to digitise every exchange and transform India into a digitally empowered society and a knowledge economy.
The Growth of the Internet
The use of the Internet exploded globally in the 1990s. In 1998, there were 70 million Internet users worldwide, of which the USA and Canada accounted for 62% while Asia had only 12%. By 2000, the number had risen to 325 million. In India, there were 3 million Internet subscribers and 15 million users by 2000 — a figure that has since grown to 700 million.
A 2017–18 study found that only one in ten households in India had a computer at home. About a quarter of all homes had Internet connectivity, either through a mobile phone or other devices. These numbers reveal the persistent digital divide in the country, despite the rapid spread of computers. Cyber connectivity was largely an urban phenomenon, though it became widely accessible through cyber cafés. Rural areas, however, remained largely unconnected due to erratic power supply, widespread illiteracy, and lack of basic infrastructure like telephone connections.
India’s Telecommunications Expansion
When India gained independence in 1947, the nation had only 84,000 telephone lines for a population of 350 million. By 1980, the situation had barely improved — there were just 2.5 million telephones and 12,000 public phones for a population of 700 million. Only 3% of India’s 600,000 villages had telephones.
A sea change occurred in the late 1990s. By 1999, India had installed a network of over 25 million telephone lines, spread across 300 cities, 4,869 towns, and 310,897 villages. This made India’s telecommunication network the ninth largest in the world. Between 1988 and 1998, the number of villages with some kind of telephone facility increased from 27,316 to 300,000 — half of all villages in India.
By 2000, about 650,000 Public Call Offices (PCOs) had mushroomed all over India, including remote, rural, hilly, and tribal areas. PCOs allowed people to simply walk in, make a call, and pay the metered charges. Their emergence satisfied a strong Indian sociocultural need: keeping in touch with family members. Much like train travel in India — often undertaken for marriages, funerals, or visiting relatives — the telephone was seen as a way of maintaining close family ties. Most advertisements for telephony services showed mothers talking to their sons and daughters, or grandparents talking to their grandchildren. Telephone and cell phone expansion in India thus served a strong sociocultural function in addition to a commercial one.