Budget Realities on PM’s Digital India & Smart Cities Projects

With this ambitious plan of PM Modi for Digital India and smart cities, the Budget 2016 broke some dreams but mostly created some strong ones. Arun Jaitley’s Budget of 2016 gave a definitive boost to the branch of IT that will drive the implementation of smart technologies for the plans of 100 smart cities to be in place. With 11 new initiatives in this budget, even the naysayers agree there is a positive trend in the field.

Industry players and experienced stalwarts have their opinion on the future of smart technologies, in India, especially in context of the PM’s ambitious Digital India and smart cities projects. Till now, things seem to be on track, with 20 cities that have also been identified for developing as smart cities.

“The overall Union Budget for 2016-17 is encouraging and a step forward to Government’s ambitious initiatives like Make in India and Digital India programmes. The Government has laid clear emphasis on integrating the effective use of technology across all the strategic imperatives in keeping with the Digital India initiative. This focus on bringing in governance reforms and ease of doing business, while highlighting the need for enhancing educational skills to make India a knowledge based economy will be acknowledged well by the industry,” says Dr Rishi Bhatnagar, Chairperson of the IET IoT Panel & President Aeris Communication

To begin with, the very fact that technology has been made the cornerstone of development is cause for excitement in the industry. Many technology companies have lauded this effort, and then of course, the rest of the course is easily visible. Says Vivekanand Venugopal, vice president and general manager, Hitachi Data Systems, India,” One of the major aspects of the budget announced is that technology will be used in all spheres, starting from tax and markets to data mining and more with the help of better IT systems. The focus on enhancing digital literacy in rural areas to cover 6 crore additional rural households is a well thought move by the government to transform and deliver growth with increased connectivity across the country.”

The Smart cities concept has also spawned a number of startups in the field. Among many others, there are new incubation agencies that will support startups to utilise the Smart Cities initiative to set up their businesses. They even have support from brands and academic institutions. Ashoka University, DLabs at the Indian School of Business, and Microsoft Ventures have set up the AIM Smart City accelerator programme, for instance. This will aim at providing smart city startups with funding, technological assistance, access to investors and also help with crucial skills as well as plan for sales.

The Budget 2016 has allocated Rs. 1000 crores for technology startups, and new entrepreneurs across the country and super excited about the budget’s support for new technology ventures. This is, the industry feels, a definitive boost for startups in the field of digital technologies. Driving the smart cities initiative, and the proposed digitization of rural India, small ventures and startups are very enthusiastic about this, though there are some unanswered questions- like how would these funds be distributed.   Now startups are taking up ventures that will create the right environment across all industries. So education, citizen initiatives – everything is all set to go digital- confirming to the development plans the Budget endorsees.

“The launch of two digital literacy schemes for rural India to cover 6 crore households in the next three years, is a welcome step. As the digital literacy increases, it will potentially help the government in delivering quality education more efficiently in the rural areas. Once the basic foundation of digital literacy is laid, it will create significant scope for an ed-tech startup like ours to work towards providing access to quality education to the students in the remotest part of the country. Startups and private companies can join hands with the government in achieving its vision of making quality education accessible for all students in the farthest corners of our country. Similarly, entrepreneurship training through MOOCs, skills-training of 1 crore youth in next 3 years and provision of Rs. 1700 crore for 1500 multi-skill development centres will help create a virtuous cycle of job creation, grounds up”,” said Vamsi Krishna. He echoes the thoughts of a number of startups in the digital consumer space.

The government has proposed many startup friendly tax-policies, in addition to numerous other incentives in the Startup India Action plan.  New enterprises like Vedantu were hoping that those policies became a reality with the budget, and provide adequate provisioning of funds where necessary. This will also boost employment in technology sectors.

Appreciating the Budgetary support for IT startups, Dr Rishi Bhatnagar, Chairperson of the IET IoT Panel & President Aeris Communication says,”It will provide the much needed impetus to young entrepreneurs to start on their own and improve the overall economy of the nation. The announcement of Digital literacy scheme launching over 6 crore additional rural households is a welcome move. We, at the IET are very positive about the fiscal growth in the long run reflected in this budget and are confident that this will put the adoption of digital technologies across the country on a growth trajectory.”

Lauding the budget, even as experts have been questioning its political leanings, Vivekanand Venugopal, India said,”We believe, the budget will help India to take-off on a faster growth trajectory and create a digitally connected India.  The budget has laid the groundwork to create more opportunities for education, skill development and job creation in the country.”

Added Dinesh Malkani, President, India & SAARC, Cisco,” For the IT industry, the Budget has outlined proposals and schemes that add thrust to the Government’s vision of digitization in India. The budget has been one of the most technology-oriented budgets we’ve ever seen. From technology platforms and data analytics to automation, the Finance Minister has bet largely on technology to encourage the digitization of G2C platforms, digital literacy, employment generation, and Smart Cities. The Internet and education are great equalisers and the government’s push for skills development of 1 crore youth in the next 3 years is a powerful initiative to transform India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy.

I believe India is well on its way to becoming one of the largest digitized countries in the world. With today’s budget, the government has taken dynamic steps to nurture local innovation and entrepreneurship, generate jobs, diversify the economy and support sustainable growth. We look forward to partnering with the government in its various initiatives.”

With an enthusiastic response from the industry and innovators, backed by the governance’s plans both in policy and in terms of money, the digitization dream may not be a dream any more.

Certainly, once it starts looking more and more real, security products brands will ensure it is creating a safe conduit. Startups with great growth intentions will ensure the fire stays lit, and the net result will be that India will fast become one of the handful countries of the world to deploy technology for citizen lifestyle betterment…and of course- conservation and optimisation of resources and expenses.