Digital India’s Transforming Role

The Narendra Modi government, soon after its epic May 2014 electoral victory announced the ambitious Digital India programme with the objective of “Transforming India into Digitally Empowered Society and Knowledge Economy.” The programme would focus on being “transformative” for India, to realise the Prime Minister’s vision of IT+ IT = IT – a clever epithet that translates to “India Today + Information Technology = India Tomorrow.”

This was powerful vision being made by a leader who had caused a tectonic political change through the significant use of social media and digital engagement of citizens and voters. Research from the McKinsey Global Institute makes astounding forecasts – in a 2014 report, the Institute stated that Digital India positions our country with the biggest opportunity yet to accelerate economic growth. In the next 10 years, leveraging technology in India through Digital India could pump in anywhere between USD 500 billion and USD 1 trillion into the economy – which represents anywhere between 20% to 30% of the current GDP of India, and is as much as the share that the manufacturing sector currently makes to the Indian GDP.

But the test of the Digital India vision and goals, lies in how it shall concretely transform the lives of the 1.2 billion Digital Indians. If the 3 vision areas for the programme – infrastructure as a utility to every citizen, governance and services on demand driving government efficiency, and digital empowerment of citizens, are any indication, this is a plan that indeed has the potential to revolutionize the lives of citizens. Information and services can be accessed with no delays – and this shall empower the citizens and propel the economy forward. The key task that now lies before this government is to create an enabling policy and execution ecosystem for technological transformation of the country. This will require a legislative environment where all stakeholders are allowed to function and fulfil their roles, and an investment backed, detailed execution plan.

Technology to Transform Government

One of the defining attributes of the Modi Government thus far has been his unrelenting focus on increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of the government. The results of this focus on bureaucratic efficiency and government execution is already very visible in the progress made in various projects during the last nine months. Already technology is being used – be it in attendance monitoring or other areas. Amongst the budgets many structural reforms is the focus on technology based targeting of subsidies. This JAM effort is probably the best thought through effort during the last six decades to tackle the scourge of leakage and corruption in subsidies.

Technology bears a direct relationship with bringing in effect a more efficient, transparent and accountable government. Creating a technological platform for administrative and decision making processes moves governments to a new form of more responsive and transparency. Transparency in turn means less corruption and crony capitalism. Responsiveness means less red tape and more efficient environment and life for citizens.

A host of other allied benefits would be accrued including reducing expenditure, enabling real time data analysis, and ensuring a faster movement of information and intelligence to key players in the bureaucracy. Each of these will in turn result in swifter, informed and more accurate decisions and policy making being taken by the government machinery. A big deal when policies are usually made by vested interests and lobbies in absence of data and facts.

Another budget promise is the transformation of our economy into a cashless economy. A good example of a well-executed technologically enabled governance service of the government is the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana. The National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI) has built a platform that, reportedly, connects all banks and telecom operators in the country. In 2014, 26 public sector banks and 3 private sector banks joined this platform that enables customers of any bank access their accounts, check balance, perform money transfers, among others through even basic feature phones. This is one of the many measures undertaken by the NPCI to make India into a cashless economy, and once well entrenched, will transform the way Indians bank, make significant savings for the exchequer while improving end line service delivery. The priorities mentioned by the Prime Minister in his electoral manifesto spoke of a "people oriented system to be put in place" and "stress on addressing people's problems". Nothing would serve that cause better than technology for service delivery and grievance redressal. It cuts down on bureaucratic procedures, and provides citizens access to information, along with expectations of a meaningful response.

Technology will Transform the Lives of Citizens

The remarkable story of a 69 years old farmer from Dharwad district of my home state Karnataka gives us a small window into exactly how the lives of India’s 1.2 billion citizens can be positively impacted by having access to a integrated technological governance and citizens service delivery platform. BM Hanasi, the owner of a seven-acre plot of land left the Karnataka cabinet completely mystified after he wrote to Chief Minister Siddaramaiah enquiring why the government was not using Google Earth's latitude and longitude coordinates and WhatsApp to verify and expedite crop insurance claims.

Currently, to assess crop damage, agents and officials have to harvest damaged crop at six different fields, take note of the last seven-year yield for the same crop and then calculate the damage. The process for awarding compensation is also protracted as the amount is first sent to the insurance company, which in turn sends it to the deputy commissioner who then remits it to the beneficiary.

By simply being technologically enabled, citizens such as Hanasi can be saved of the mire of government bureaucracy and political corruption. A painful process for a citizen, that would otherwise take upto six months, could be transformed in to a real time process through the use of simple, affordable and easily accessible technologies. This is the real opportunity and potential of Digital India – the benefits it brings to the end line service user – and the government needs to do all that it takes to harness it.

Whether the focus is on transforming the government-to-citizen, government-to-business or government-to-government dynamics, there is a need for this programme to go beyond directional statements and accelerate towards a vision for a virtually integrated India – which is already home to 850 million mobile users and 220 million Internet users. Virtually Integrating India

While physically integrating the country is expensive (because of costs of airports, rail links etc) and is time consuming and is a work in progress – Digital India can integrate far flung parts of the nation with the rest of the country. The North East, Jammu and Kashmir can be integrated far more efficiently, economically and in all other ways on a Digital network. The possibilities of creating entrepreneurs on the back of these are immense thus also possibly transforming local economies. In a sense, the ultimate objective of Digital India is to integrate the country and the economy. By facilitating an efficient, enabling technological platform, citizens from the remotest parts of the country shall be able to partake in and contribute to the country’s economy. The North Eastern states for instance, hold tremendous potential for Information Technology led growth and development. With a very high literacy rate (over 70 %), and large number of people fluent in English, the region holds strong potential for growth of information technology enabled services – which is precisely what the eighth pillar of Digital India – ‘IT for Jobs’ is about. Envisaging a country that successfully navigated the transformation of the Telecom sector, and created over one crore jobs over a five year period through Business Process Outsourcing units

Digital India in Budget 2015

Digital India did not find elaborate mention in the Finance Minister’s Budget address earlier this week. The extension of the National Optic Fibre Network was announced, and the programme goal of connecting 2.5 lakh Gram Panchayats by 2016 was only simply reiterated.

The challenge for Digital India is to provide last mile connectivity to Phase 3 and 4 areas – which are India’s smallest towns and villages. Digitising these inhabitations require massive investments. It is clear that while Government has a role in making investments, bulk of this investment and innovation must come from a Public-Private partnership that brings in the strong technological and entrepreneurial eco system of India fully into this. It is clear that the success of Digital India’ depends on the innovative policy and enabling framework that government creates – and it is equally important that apart from being an investor, the government assigns to itself a role of being an innovation and investment enabler and plays that role well.

Digital India is a plan that will transform India in many real ways. The focus now is to move from the talk of Digital India to the real walking and building on the talk. India’s role as a global technology leader and indeed as a democracy that’s redefining the role of citizenship and government will be shaped by the success of Digital India.

About The Author

Rajeev Chandrasekhar