The Great Indian Digitization

 Today, the word ‘Smart’ has become synonymous with our PM’s concept of urban development. He equates urban growth and development with better utilisation of technology, digitization of various aspects of urban planning and lifestyle, and hence save on costs, conserve energy and make life better for Indians.

While the smart cities initiative was announced in 2012 , and allocated Rs. 98000 crores for the development of 100 smart cities and  rejuvenation of 500 others. This year, just before the budget, 20 cities were chosen across the country, as the first batch to be developed. There is excitement in the air, and the Budget was expected to add to it. We take a look at how the reactions from the industry have been- the budgetary support for digitisation of India, and what direction it has taken.

Industry players had enthusiastically welcomed the Smart Cities initiative in 2012 when it was first announced. “As a key aspect of PM Modi’s Digital India initiative, the proposals announced by the finance minister on e-governance entails using technology to speed up governance decisions and plans. Our greatest opportunity is to help achieve the government’s vision of using technology for citizen services to create collaboration, flexibility and productivity.  What was once a technological infrastructure will become a social infrastructure – essential, seamless, connecting not just people but communities, systems, processes and intelligence,” says Vivekanand Venugopal, vice president and general manager, Hitachi Data Systems, India.

Smart Cities is not a new or novel concept, but it could be just what India needs to take its rightful place on the world map in citizenship matters. Across the world, many cities have utilised digital technology to make life easier, faster, more environment friendly and more cost conscious. Bangkok’s  initiatives of  citizen-led planning,  Barcelona’s greater adoption of solar energy through a Solar Thermal Ordinance to increase energy sustainability, Curitiba’s effective trash collection management that helped the city to pioneer environmental protection initiatives – are some examples of using technology to drive a Smart initiative that helps citizen groups.

In DongCheng, local governance utilised smart technologies to address citizen issues using GIS and GPS technologies, and managed to duplicate this solution across a number of other Chinese cities as well using GIS and GPS technologies. These techs break the city into smaller zones and track all complaints within these zones, a solution that has been replicated in multiple Chinese municipalities.  In another interesting initiative, the Chinese city of Hangzhou came up with a very simple solution for traffic decongestion – bike sharing online. In India, Hubli’s initiative of predicting water supply through mobile technology is worth a mention, and so it the citizen feedback and so is the initiative in Hyderabad that helps the government better address citizen grievances and follow ups using an online platform. A similar initiative has been deployed in other states of India as well, Madhya Pradesh (MPOnline,  a portal that provides access to more than 275 government services across education, employment and other government information) and Karnataka to name a few! In Visakhapatnam, the Municipality has a system in place for assessing and collecting property taxes, providing relief to citizens and also boosting revenues for the city.

All these projects had one thing in common- a smart machine (and sometimes more than one). A smart machine is essentially a cognitive, contextually aware computing system that is capable of choosing the best process options, without human intervention. They have machine learning abilities and are programmed to make choices that meet a certain objective- like cut energy costs, or optimise energy usage.   

The adoption of smart technologies is not a matter of choice any more. It’s coming, and it’s going to take over the daily life of human civilisation very soon. The only choice we have is to implement it in a way that serves the greatest good, and adds value to our lives.

In India, the government has been pushing Smart cities that use smart technologies across the board. This simply means various deployments of technology initiatives that are connected on a platform across the web.

The major play is of IoT and M2M, and of course, mobility. Between these, the whole world of Smart cities resides. The government has approved Rs. 980 billion (Rs. 98000 crores) for the deployment of 100 smart cities chosen from across the country. The plans are for assured and optimised water and power supply, sanitation and solid waste management, efficient urban mobility and public transport, robust IT connectivity, e-governance and citizen participation along with safety of its citizens.  With more than 31% of India’s population living in urban centres, and the number soon to touch 50%, this initiative will cover a large part of the Indian population.

According to government sources, the Indian economy is 50% digitised, and will be 100 % digitized over the next 5 years. With 402 million people on the net with 371 million using the mobile internet, connectivity does not seem to be a challenge any more. In fact, quite the opposite, it’s the security threats that this gigantic network presents to each of the nodes that will need to be the next consideration. But more on that later. However, the issue of connectivity for rural India may pose a challenge, due to the high costs. In order for Digital India’s smart applications can be leveraged for all area sonly when connectivity is ubiquitous and cheap.

The new kid on the block- the startup ventures, truly trust the digital India initiative as a driver for development, and look forward to support from the budget.   With 800 million people under the age of 35, entrepreneurship could be the biggest driver for technology and digitisation of India’s entire business and civic environment.  A good, healthy boost for   entrepreneurship will not only help create jobs and accelerate the speed of economic growth, but also  strengthen the faith of the younger Indian to see the governance as  being pro-startups, pro-entrepreneurs and pro-youth in a decisive way.  Digitisation of education will also be a big step in the direction of arming the younger generation with strong   technology skills.

Vamsi Krishna, CEO and Co-founder, Vedantu Innovations Pvt. Ltd. says, “The Digital India program initiated by the Government of India will go a long way in transforming the nation into a digital knowledge superpower in the world. In the upcoming budget a significant allocation to develop a robust digital infrastructure across the country would be essential to translate the Digital India vision into reality. Reports indicate that the market for online education in India is slated to grow up to $40 billion by 2017. It is imperative to invest in creating a digital ecosystem which will further amplify growth for digital education in India – to ensure quality education becomes accessible to students in the remotest part of the country so that they are at par with their global peers. Digital education needs a solid push along with increase in overall expenditure towards education [it has been consistently below 4% of GDP] to ensure India reaps benefits of demographic dividend.”