GENERAL OBSERVATIONS:
Large scale use of information in all countries by a wide cross section of people has resulted in the coming of terms like 'information age and information society', which signify the pervasive nature of information in modern society. Information today is regarded as a valuable resource which helps in transforming nutural resources of a country into finished products. The availability of information and facilities to store and exploit it gives a country economic, technological as well as political advantages over other countries. The political power of a few big nations is derived from information. Information has, thus, an economic value and is a tradable commodity, which gets produced sold and consumed, involving increasingly a large number of people. Information handling in this sense is an industry (information industry). Futurologists say that we are entering an era in which trade will consist largely of information exchange. Even when, trade involves commodities other than information, like raw materials, intermediate and finished products or services, it will be dependent on information exchange systems.