Digital India to me, is one of those visionary ideas that has the potential and depth to transform India. What excites me most about it is that it promises to fix a serious problem that has held India back. For years, we have been the IT hub for the world and our IT workers have solved some of the biggest technology problems worldwide, but we have completely ignored using that expertise to solve India’s own problems.
The cost of doing nothing has been very high! Finally there is a government that is doing something about changing it and as the industry, we should not be asking whether it can be done or not, but join hands to accelerate the execution and ensure we see the impact at the earliest.
According to a recent McKinsey report, the realisation of Digital India will help the country with 20-30% incremental GDP by 2025. The adoption of technology across key sectors like financial services, healthcare, agriculture, energy, infrastructure and education will provide an additional impact of $550 billion to $1 trillion on the India economy annually by 2025!
The numbers are mind boggling, but they can be achieved, especially as rapid pace of innovation is increasingly making technology more favourable for mass scale adoption, which is a must for the successful realisation of Digital India. The stars, as they say, are aligning well. What is needed now is an unprecedented focus and the will to make it happen across both government and industry.
Henry Ford once said that coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress and working together is a success. This could not be any truer for India than it is today. Realising such an important and enormous vision cannot be the government’s job alone. We have to be an equal partner in this journey.
The government has set the stage with a strong vision and an equally strong show of will to make it happen. What we need now is for them to focus on setting the right policy frameworks and processes that make it easy for industry to do business in India and encourage us to participate in India’s journey towards becoming a digital India. The government must encourage open global standards that will enable India to benefit from the best technology worldwide and continue to champion the cause with unwavering political will.
Broadly, there are three key parts to Digital India; building a robust secure infrastructure, growing an ecosystem to develop customised solutions for citizens across hardware and software and developing the right skill sets for technology innovation and usage. Our recommendation to the government would be to set up PPP forums in each of these segments to invite industry to participate in areas where they have the domain expertise and interest.
The National Digital Literacy Mission is a classic example of a robust PPP that’s delivered impact at the grassroots. Launched by Intel and Nasscom in 2012, the initiative brought together several industry players on a common platform to accelerate digital literacy in the country. To date over 3 million citizens have been trained and one member in every household in the first three panchayats to receive NOFN is e-literate.
The department of electronics and information technology, having seen the benefits of this programme has fully adopted it to drive scale especially given the importance of widespread digital literacy in India.
The one area where this kind of a model is needed with a high level of urgency is in developing the culture of innovation in India. For the impact of Digital India to be realised, we have to use technology to solve problems faced by Indians and for that we need a very strong culture of grounds-up frugal innovation in IT.
The Government’s ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas’ philosophy encapsulates the importance of collaboration and the time is right for both sides to make it happen because irrespective of the challenge, the cost of inaction is far too damaging for not just the business but the nation at large.
By Debjani Ghosh
MD, Intel South Asia