Digital India: What’s Next?

Digital transformation is a key central theme of Budget 2022 with announcements ranging from infrastructure status to data centres to taking fibre to all panchayats under the BharatNet programme. Introduction of a blockchain based sovereign digital currency, setting up of 75 digital banking units, constitution of an Animation, Visual effects, Gaming and Comics (AVGC) task force, launch of a digital university, digitalisation of school education platforms and support for the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme for large scale electronics manufacturing and IT hardware were also part of the overall focus. The incentive scheme of US $10 billion for semiconductor and display fabs announced earlier also fits into the broader vision for making India “Aatmanirbhar” and a global leader in digital technologies.

How can the Digital India programme be reinvented to achieve this vision? This programme, launched in 2015 with the goal of ushering in digitally driven transformation in governance, economy and society, already has many highly noteworthy achievements. Many flagship schemes, e.g., the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), the digital literacy programme (PMGDISHA), e-Hospital, DigiLocker, Common Service Centres (CSCs), etc. have seen massive expansion under Digital India. The number of internet users has also grown to over 83 crores now, which is fuelling further aspirations for a full-scale digital transformation in all domains with focus on ease of living and ease of doing business.

The Digital India 2.0 needs to be architected on six major pillars for accelerating digitalisation and achieving the vision of complete digital transformation. First, it needs to ensure provision of world-class digital infrastructure in the country, including high-speed broadband connectivity to all through fibre and 5G network, and hyperscale data centres to make India a global hub for data centres and cloud. With increasing focus on privacy, security and the need for storing data within the country, there are strong demand drivers in place for making investments in data centres attractive.

Second, digital government and digital services need to undergo a paradigm shift with focus on data governance, whole-of-government approach and creation of new public digital platforms in major domains such as education, health, agriculture, logistics, etc. The National Digital Health Mission and the PM Gati Shakti initiatives are aimed at this vision. There is a need for building similar public digital platforms in other domains. There also needs to be a strong focus on standards, interoperability and using common technology platforms, such as Aadhaar, UPI, Single Sign-on, etc. to make the development of new applications easier and faster.

The third major area where there is a great potential for digital transformation is in accelerating the growth of our digital economy to at least USD one trillion in the next 4-5 years. This requires ensuring high and sustainable growth in electronics manufacturing, IT-ITES and emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, Internet of Things, 5G, etc. Creating a vibrant start-up ecosystem in these areas holds the key to achieving the trillion-dollar digital economy goal.   

Fourth, we need to modernise our digital laws to support the rapid growth of the digital economy, and address the growing concerns on accountability of online platforms and increasing cyber security threats. Enacting the personal data protection bill would help in addressing the privacy concerns. The new statutes would be helpful in creating trust and confidence amongst the users in the online world, which is crucial for digital inclusion as we need to focus now on bringing the remaining 40% of the population into the digital world.

Another major area of focus should be on rapid advancements in strategic and emerging technologies with ownership of intellectual property. We need to quickly formulate national strategies in these areas and fund the flagship initiatives. Recently published strategies by MeitY on blockchain and additive manufacturing are steps in the right direction. A national policy on data governance also needs to be formulated so that access to data, so crucial to advancement in these technologies, is made easier for our researchers, start-ups, etc.

Last, but not the least, there needs to be a strong push for skilling and capacity building in digital technologies at all levels in partnership with the industry and academia. Schemes such as FutureSkills Prime need to be expanded to provide for the rapidly growing need for highly skilled resources. PMGDISHA needs to expand at the population scale to make all citizens digitally literate. India should rightly aim at becoming the skill and talent capital of the world.

With rapid strides already made under the Digital India programme, it is the right time to visualise India becoming a global leader in digital technologies across the entire spectrum, not just in IT services. The next phase of Digital India should aim to achieve this vision.

(The above article appeared in The Economic Times on April 3, 2022 and is available at: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/technology/whats-next-for-digital-india/articleshow/90608332.cms. The views are personal.)