A Study on the Indian Information Sector: An Experiment with Input-Output Techniques

It is widely recognized that rapid changes in information technology (IT) are bringing about major structural changes in the economies of the world. Information flexibility, product quality and fast response are the key factors for global competition and IT plays a critical role in these areas. Policy-makers in industrialized and developing countries view IT as a critical infrastructure to enhance their access to global knowledge, markets and capital. These views--of IT as infrastructure and as core capability for development--resonate with India's aspirations to modernize its infrastructure, transform its industry and join the global economy. Realizing the huge potential of the Indian IT industry, we make an attempt in this paper to study the extent of informatization in the Indian economy during the period 1983-84 to 1989-90 and try to identify the information intensive sectors. This paper also studies the sources of growth of the information sectors of India during 1983-84 to 1989-90 with the help of a structural decomposition analysis (SDA).