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          Introduction
In the words of Microsoft's Bill Gates, "Let's be serious. Do people have a clear view of what it means to live on $1 a day? ... There are things those people need at that level other than technology ... About 99 percent of the benefits of having [a PC] come when you've provided reasonable health and literacy to the person who's going to sit down and use it". There has been a strong debate on the issue if ICT (information & Communications Technology) is relevant to the poor. The people in developing countries not only have no access to ICT, but also they have shortage of balanced diet, lack of educational institution and proper health services as compared to the people of wealthy countries.. The living condition of the people of the poor developing countries are characterised by hunger, poverty, poor health, shortage of pure drinking water and lack of sanitation facilities. In any case, the gravity of the issues may sound more relevant to fight against basic human needs of the people than thinking of facilitating access to telephone or internet services. But forcing debate in this direction for choosing between ICT and other basic development activities cannot be a valid point of argument especially when ICT can be seen as effective promoter and active catalyst of achieving other development goals. The application of ICT is increasingly important in delivery of the services-such as health and education, the creation of economic opportunities for the people and amplifying the voice of the poor. It is hot a matter of choosing between ICT and health or education but instead that of choosing the best possible effective ways of ICT to help in the delivery of health, education and small business services (world bank, 2002).
The prominent role ICT can play while deploying its four core characteristics (information, borderless connection, timeliness and improving cost and benefit) in each of the development strategies facilitating access, adaptation and creation of knowledge to stimulate development and economic growth. The extent of the use of computer as computing and retrieval storage devices is profoundly important to the changes in the competitive environment of business organisations and nations. We can't simply ignore the implication of the technologies affecting the issues of society and governance irrespective of whatever situation prevails within geographical boundaries of a nation but the deployment of technologies may vary from country to country based on its critical infrastructure to embrace these technologies. The number of computer, Internet access, telephone (Fixed and Mobile), and cable TV for every 100 household in developed countries is definitely much higher comparing the developing and undeveloped countries. On the contrary this does not imply that there is no or little relevance of such technology in augmenting the productivity and efficiency of individuals and organisations in developing countries. The critical mass is a vital element for any new technologies to take- off ensuring productivity of innovative skill and techniques, which multiply the adaptations and deployment rate at much faster pace. Many of the developing countries by and large lack necessary infrastructure support and the question of affordable service tend to push back the critical mass factor at marginal level thus usage of. the facility remained confined within a small section of the society.
This is beyond any doubt that current development and impact of ICT has laid down a new trend of enforcing continuous growth and advancement in almost every sphere of human life. The ICT driven services and technologies are contributing to the revolutionary changes in business everyday life. ICTs include a broad spectrum of communication technologies from radio, film, television, press, telephone, and Internet to more participatory forms such as theatre, video or story telling. This broaden base of ICT scope promises to deliver services and products with enormous development potential in the improvement of social and economic fundamentals. Convinced with abundant benefits associated with the ICT sector, International community has initiated a global campaign for development and adaptation of ICT enabled services for realising other development goal for the developing countries. The susceptibility of above issue remained unanswered in the face of the substantial disparity in the state of essential infrastructure facilities, the level of locally available expertise and the ability of the developing nation to commit huge capital investment to see ICT being applied as the central growth engine to achieve millennium development goals. The degree of the importance and effectiveness of such Strategies aiming to prioritise the power of the ICT depends on the nation's current existence on development curve and its ability to formulate good policies and stronger institutions to oversee the reforms. The relevance of ICT in shaping the future prospect for developing countries pointing to some basic fundamental issues has naturally become the theme of the this article.
ICT and Economy
A world bank study maintains that as much as one half of the difference between Africa's manufacturing exports as a share of GDP and the much higher east Asian share may be caused by former's poor telecommunication (World bank 2000). Evidence for Botswana and Zimbabwe shows that area without access to telephones has substantially less entrepreneurial activities (ibid, p20). A similar study states that: area with high level of resources and skilled labour but with lower levels of telephony have fewer productive enterprises (Robison and Crenshaw, 200, p.5). This suggests that it is quite plausible that countries with poor telecommunication are poorer in turn as a result: a good telecom infrastructure is not only the outcome of the economic growth, but is an input to growth as well. So, the penetration of telephone in developing countries as means of disseminating information is vital for development and the margina information is greater in developing countries as compared to developed countries. A farmer of remotest rural area in poor developing countries who has access to telecommunication services can easily be well informed on activities of wholesale food grain market and can make selling or purchasing decision even not being present physically in the market place. This makes to lead the positive economic outcomes for the farmer making market more transparent through greater access to information and more efficient through the resulting decline in transaction and transportation cost.
Development of ICT has impacted the major changes the way economic and business activities are taken place currently. This new development has basically created two layers of benefit by enlarging the ICT industry itself creating job, employment and at the same time impacting the other economic activities as in the manufacturing and service sector. "Qualitatively,' the most important change that has been made possible by ICT is that it has further separated product development from the production processes (Ernst and Guerrieri, 1998). It plays much more to plan the product, design it, establish logistic for its manufacture, monitor its quality, manage brand name than actually to produce it. ICT has accelerated this process beyond recognition, and, on top of it, it has shortened the production development period so much that now it is virtually a matter of concurrent engineering ". In order to achieve well known economies of scale as well economies of scope in the production process, the linear production system of sequential steps has been rearranged such that different parts get outsourced in different places even sometime thousands miles away in one country and transported to an assembly point for just in-time delivery. The ICT aided system support such as computer aided design and computer aided management made it possible to transform many developing economies of Asia to be an active participator in the development and supply chain, of ICT products to the global market because of their labour cost advantage. The cumulative effect of these developments have been tremendous that many countries like Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, People Republic of China and India are earning a huge amount of foreign exchange from the export of hardware and software to Developed Countries.
The growth of ICT is largely unequal amongst the developing countries too; this may be evident by comparing the number of personal computer and number of Internet hosts between People Republic of China and Bangladesh. This may also be indicative to the fact that ICT's application, adaptation, spread and its linkages with rest of the economy will vary to a large extend on the critical infrastructure and other development agendas depending upon macro status of the Economy. ICT promises to offer technological invention and innovation with wide applicability in various manufacturing and services and has potential to affect all sector of economy by imbuing greater information and development content in product and processes. We have no presumption of suggesting the fact that ICT does equally provide potential forward linkages for all economy of developing world but, if it is designed for the right job, can be deployed as an effective toot to fight against lack of adequate food, drinking water, shelter, health, literacy, roads and electricity.
Most of the developing. economies are in the transition process to match with the new world heading toward full globalisation promising to liberalisation and privatisation of businesses within their national boundaries. To be able to take the least advantage of the newly created world business environment, every developing national will have to adopt ICT because it may be found very soon that all business decisions are made on the basis of availability of inherent ICT facilities. The effectiveness of ICT in economic reforms is regarded to be vital in order to lay down a good monitoring system, embed policy reforms into institutional processes and transactions, which can be readily monitored and audited.
New Business Development
ICT has an important impact in creating new opportunities in developing countries by enabling the creation of product ranging from digital product such as music to handicraft while eliminating the middlemen. A global artisans trading exchange through which local crafts people in poor regions of many developing countries can increase their income not only through access to new market but also effectively removing the wholesales intermediaries from their product into the international market. The local crafts people some times may get 95% of the selling price for their product where in previous cases they were getting only 10% of the selling of the product.
ICT and Governance
Good state governance characterises equality, efficiency, responsiveness, transparency, inclusiveness, and freedom from corruption is a major issue in most of the developing countries and in absence of this, a persistent economic and social development cannot be achieved. It is considered that a transparent government is vital for sustained human development and well being of the state.
Governance by definition is the way in which governments make decisions that are shared and exercised in society, and by extension, democratic governance is about government's decision making that is open or public, accountable, transparent, fair, and respectful of individual privacy ICT driven e-governance is believed to assist governmental functioning faster and smarter enabling them to play a critical role in changing the style of operation of the public sector that in many developing countries stands for inefficiency, nonperformance, lack of accountability and corruption from top to bottom. ICT has already started to transform government's ability to strengthen its relations with citizens. Consultation and dialogue with households and businesses are fast becoming routine. ICT also allows government experts to tap new sources of policyrelevant ideas and information, and so improve their performance. E-governance offers bountiful possibilities for government to reinvest itself by making the delivery of government services more efficient by integrating or clustering them, and making them available through a single point of access that provides one-stop, non-stop query and response, which is altogether interactive and facilitates greater simplicity of services with transparency to the public. Costs of public sector operation in developing countries take away a high percentage of total state's revenue earning that leaves almost nothing with government to invest in other development activities. The potential for the state to save money through the deployment of ICTs is enormous, as the developing countries will have to lessen the dependence on foreign fund for undertaking development activities based on their strategic prioritisation.
Apart from the above, ICT has an important impact on national and international governance. ICT facilitates flow of information across the national boundaries making it possible to collaborate and cooperate effectively between the nations. Easier access to information and an increased flow of information in civil society, including NGOs and media make institutional actor such as government and international organisation increasingly transparent and accountable.
ICT as a unique opportunity
ICTs are considered unique in number of ways compared to other leading industries of the past such as Steel, Chemical, machinery that were responsible for industrial growth and development. There was a need of massive financial investment in the industrial revolution of the past for building the plant, machineries and infrastructure besides the accumulation of the experience. Many of developing countries could not take any leverage from the industrial revolution of the last century due to the scarcity of resources and remained dependent on industrialised nations in many ways on the supply of production capabilities. ICT does not require massive direct investment in term of fixed plant machinery and infrastructure. Moreover, ICT application often appears to be complementary to efforts to improve the quality, speed and flexibility of production, offering a compensating advantages against shortcomings in production capacities (Lal, 2000). The components and systems of ICT technologies are internationally available from highly competitive market, and easily transportable as well transferable to any country whoever interested to make use of them for productivity reason.
It is possible for developing countries to progress in the information economy or achieve entry into global value chains in information and knowledge -based services by educating and developing skilled work force. The participation in ICT markets can only be achieved on the basis of full range of skills. Developing countries can create low-end jobs in the ICT market and at the same time can strive to develop higher ICT skills. Indian software industry has enjoyed the growth in excess of 50% per year since the mid- 1990s, currently employs 180,000 people and generates US$ 4 billion in annual revenue, at the same time well over 250,000 are employed in data-entry and data processing jobs. India has also created 600,000 jobs at even lower skill level in telecentres providing community-based phone access, for which only minimal educational attainment is required (ILO, 2001, Chapter 4 and 6).
This clearly suggests that building a workforce through the process of education, learning and skill development, ICT provides ample opportunities for the developing countries with scarcit resources and burden with liability of the huge population. Developing countries need to find possible ways how best to educate their workforce and making them reached at least to a lower skill levels to be able to participate in the new ICT market. On the other hand, the acquisition of the higher level of skill such as the knowledge of hardware ' and software, which are most profitable and secure in international market, stimulates foreign direct investment from major multinational enterprises in ICT.
A certain infrastructure must need to be in place in order to benefit from ICT for delivering better services in health and education, to create better living condition and to explore new business opportunities for the people. There are number of cases in the developing world where this has been achieved in a sustainable ways which means that access is provided, such that it can generate enough revenue for producing marginal profit after covering direct and indirect cost and also making the financial provisioning for necessary improvement to evolve as the technologies develop. Grameen telecom's village phone in Bangladesh is an interesting example of connectivity that aims to link rural people of the country with rest of the world through the micro finance scheme of the Grameen Bank. An entity Grameen telecom was created with the explicit aim of helping the bank's members shift from low-yield traditional ventures like animal husbandry into the technology sector by creating the micro enterprises that can generate earning as well provide the connectivity to people of the village. The Grameen bank provides borrowing mostly to female for purchasing such phone that sells phone services to village customer by Gall. This shared -access business model can generate to meet high service demand and creates relatively high cash flow, even in poor village thus enabling the operators to make regular payment of the loans plus reasonable amount as profit. This effort must be appreciated one step forward as a means of promoting woman empowerment as one of the millennium development goals.
Conclusion:
According to the United Nations (UN) classification, in 1997 the developing world consisted of 124 countries out of 174 countries in the world. There has been considerable disparities exist within group of the developing countries in relation to the size and strength of the economy with differentiated level of human development index. This reveals that the relevance of ICT for one country will distinctively be different in nature and order compared to other country. The development agendas of larger countries and economies (China and India) differ considerably from those facing smaller nations whose internal market is very small and dependent on linkage to markets and knowledge beyond its national boundaries. Some countries would be looking to possible make use of ICT for fighting against poverty, hunger and other basic human needs whereas some country might look into the possibility of entering into the global supply chain of the ICT products and services to earn foreign exchange.
The dimension of relevance of ICT does largely vary within developing countries but it can be a potentially powerful tool when used judiciously as a part of overall development strategies. The challenge for all developing countries is to build on the experience to date to make these tools available to the stakeholders who are best positioned to adapt and apply them to their most pressing needs. We cannot think ICT as magic bullet for development as one size does not fit all developing countries. Every developing country is unique with its own distinctive sets of challenges, needs, resources and priority so is the relevance of ICT for each of the countries.
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The writer was a Master of Communication Management
Graduate Business School
University Of Strathclyde