Bidirectional Linkage Between ICT Infrastructure and Global Innovation Index- A Comparative Study Between India and China

The past few decades have seen a significant rise in the use of information and communication technology (ICT) which has prompted and influenced the researchers all over the world to undertake this topic for examining and scaling its impact on the countries who are adapting ICT in their day to day usage. To rank and quantify the ICT infrastructure of the countries several indexes were suggested and used, but the global innovation index by WIPO came out to be the most comprehensive and promising index among all. The present study is an attempt to understand the economics of GII, the relationship between innovation and ICT. As we know that among the BRICS nations China and India are the fastest growing and closely competing economies and they also happen to be the fastest growing telecommunication markets in emerging economies of the world. This paper has tried to examine the ICT infrastructure development in China and India. Though as per the findings and the current 2019 GII ranking in terms of ICT puts India at 79^th rank and China at 26^th rank globally. These seemingly simple facts are investigated deeply. On the basis of the in-depth analysis of the rankings scored by both India and China in GII, 2019 and the rankings scored by both of the countries in e-governance index (EGDI) and e-participation index (EPART) it can be easily concluded that China is the clear winner especially in the fields of ICT Use, ICT access, e-participation and e-government services.