85% of Indians are offline: Study

NEW DELHI: India ranks 20 in a list of 25 countries on the "Internet Barriers Index" identified by a study from McKinsey & Company and internet.org, a Facebook-promoted project to bring more people online. A low rank on the index indicates high barriers.
The list, topped by the United States for lowest barriers, has six developed and 19 developing countries. India ranks right above Nigeria and below Egypt on the index.
The study report called "Offline and falling behind: Barriers to Internet adoption" identifies offline population as one that has "not used the Internet (from any device) in the past 12 months".
The countries were ranked on the index on the basis of their scores on four kinds of barriers: incentives, low incomes and affordability, user capability, and infrastructure.
The study found that the key demographic features of the offline population in India – pegged at 85% – were illiteracy, low income, and a rural location. "India's non-Internet user population is overwhelmingly rural (73%), and a high proportion is illiterate (43%) and female (54%)," the report said.
The report finds that while India performs well on the affordability front, it has room for improvement. "The average absolute price for data downloads and smartphones (for India) are among the lowest of the countries researched in this report. However, a closer look at India's consumer economic profile uncovers tremendous challenges due to low incomes," said the report that has chiefly gathered its India data, inter alia, from World Bank reports and those from the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and IMRB International's 2013 report Internet in India.
Literacy was identified as another major barrier. "Given that literacy is a prerequisite for being able to participate fully in society—including the action of getting online—a low literacy rate is a major impediment to increasing Internet penetration," said the report that pegs the world's offline population at 4.4 billion. Around 3.4 billion or 75% of these, it says, live in just 20 countries, while 920 million of those 3.4 billion are illiterate.
The BRIC countries along with the US have a significant role in adding to the online population. Around 48% of the nearly 1.8 billion users that came online from 2004 to 2013, says the report, are from Brazil, China, India, Russia, and the United States. It predicts that between 500 million and 900 million new Internet users will be added by 2017.
Among the drivers of Internet adoption, the report identifies e-commerce as a powerful factor particularly for the urban, high-income segment. It also predicts the centrality of mobile-messaging apps in the same.
"Mass e-commerce in India will likely follow the same path as China where messaging platforms such as Tencent's WeChat are becoming the de facto connection, transaction, and payment platforms. While WhatsApp is being informally used in India for such purposes, integration with payment systems is still lacking," the report said.