Digital Evolution Index 2017: India Ranked Poor 53 in 60 Countries

As part of a collaboration between the Fletcher School at Tufts University and Mastercard, the Digital Evolution Index (DEI) has analyzed the state and rate of digital evolution across 60 countries.

The index was released during the ongoing World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland.

This evolution is the outcome of an interplay among four drivers, with about 170 indicators across them. By measuring each country’s current state of digital evolution and its pace of digital evolution over time, these countries are placed in four zones: Stand Out, Stall Out, Break Out, Watch Out.

According to DEI, India falls in the “ Break Out” category and clubbed with laggard countries such as Bangladesh, Kenya, Morocco, and Indonesia. Break Out countries are low-scoring in their current states of digitalization.

Worse, India’s rank (53) is the lowest among BRICS (Brazil – 46, Russia – 39, India – 53, China – 36, and South Africa – 43) nations.

[ Download the Consultative Paper: Need to Transform the Political System in India ]

Poor Tech Adoption

India’s low score is mainly because of the country’s poor adoption of information technology systems to provide web-based citizen services. Almost all the government websites lack content, carry broken links, and many of them give wrong e-mail addresses of its officials.

Moreover, almost all the government officials including top bureaucrats are not trained to handle online interfaces and they lack language skills to communicate with the citizens. As a result, the government officials fail to respond to the citizens’ queries.

[ WEF Davos: GDP Is Passé, Now Welcome IDI. India’s Rank: 62 ]

In today’s increasingly specialized and cut-throat world, a person needs in-depth knowledge and extensive domain expertise to handle a particular department even in a small company.

But it is highly unfortunate that people with no qualification or expertise become Presidents, Prime Ministers, ministers, and bureaucrats in India to manage highly complex domains of governance. That’s why India continues to be a poor, underdeveloped country.

As they are extremely inefficient and illiterate, Indian politicians and bureaucrats do not take decisions to resolve public problems. They keep rotating written public complaints from one desk to another.

Consequently, citizens are left with no other option but to approach the courts. As courts are always overcrowded, their decisions are either inordinately delayed or lack justice.