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Inclusive Growth through Mobiles – II The first part of this two-part paper examined the stupendous growth of mobiles and the opportunity for leveraging their penetration for achieving inclusive growth. The concluding part examines the policy environment around the mobile ecosystem and also takes note of key challenges in the path of achieving this objective Ashis Sanyal
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he four major stakeholders in the mobile eco-system, namely, Government, Regulator, Private Sector Industry and the Civil Society, do understand the potential of the mobile media. However, an all-out buy-in has been rather slow in coming from them. The need for an effective policy and regulatory framework, aided by innovative business models created for the bottom of the pyramid and improvements in network capacity and utilisation are all necessary in order for mobiles to achieve the potential for becoming tools for inclusive growth.
Financial Inclusion through Mobile Platform One of the important cornerstones of inclusive growth is financial inclusion for which the primary attribute is greater access to capital. Mobile platform can be a very potential tool for the same. We recall that out of 1100 million of Indian population, nearly 70 percent lives in rural locations and over 90 million rural households are on farming. Out of the farm households, approximately 27 percent are indebted to formal sources and 13 percent are availing loans from the banks in the annual income bracket of INR 50,000 or less. Millions of people in rural and remote areas in India March 2012 / www.egovonline.net / egov
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