Digital India campaign has led India to substantial growth

Today is the fifth anniversary of Digital India. Here are quotes from some industry leaders.

Kamal Kishore, Head of Data Science and Engineering Practice at ThoughtWorks

In these times of Covid-19, AI tech is rapidly rising to the occasion. In previous outbreaks like 2003’s SARS, AI predictions suffered from both lack of data and deficient processing ability. But, today, the evolved tech is being leveraged to arrive at highly accurate predictions. Sophisticated processes, classifications and filtering of appropriate information from millions of sources like news websites, government reports, social media, blogs and more are directing people towards possible remedial measures.

The advanced AI models can identify both potential geographic and socioeconomic groups that are most vulnerable to the current outbreak. Today, analytics is the potent tool whose insights are empowering governments and healthcare agencies to better manage the situation and plan for the future.

Nikhil Rathi, CEO and Founder of Web Werks India

The Digital India campaign has led India to substantial growth with a massive push in the use of the Internet and data. A lot of endeavors like data localization, Local pe Vocal, etc. are supporting the initiatives of Digital India, and so we are seeing more and more digitization and uptake of India centric services. The Aarogya Sethu App and the support it brought to the nation while we work through the pandemic is one classic example. These initiatives supported by Indian technology make the country absolutely self-reliant particularly in the face of international dilemmas.

With apps like Cred, BHIM UPI, etc, you now have services available on your compute and some of these services are not even available outside the country. The government too has supported the growth of citizen services. With all of this, we see that even though India is a complex country, there has been a lot of improvement and a lot has been achieved.

Vinay Sharma- Head of Digital and Services at S Chand & Co.

As a country, we have made significant progress under the Digital India programme. Important objectives of the program like providing broadband highways, universal access to mobile connectivity, public internet access programme, e-governance and improvements in education through digital education have all met with some degree of success.

One of the most successful outcomes of the Digital India initiative has been the runaway success of the Jandhan-Aadhaar- Mobile< JAM> initiative, which has provided a digital identity to more than a billion Indian citizens as well as access to the banking system to millions of Indians who were earlier excluded from the formal economy.

In a country like India with a vast geography and huge population, it is difficult to provide quality education through conventional infrastructure. Hence digital education can fill that gap of providing quality education at scale. Various Government initiatives such as SWAYAM, NAD, E-Acharya etc. in education under Digital India umbrella are set to create a significant impact on student’s education as well as teacher’s professional development.

In the realm of digital literacy, the government’s Pradhan Mantri Gramin Digital Saksharta Abhiyan with its ambitions of making 60 million Indians digitally literate will have far reaching impact in the coming years.

Following the success of the Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) initiative, the focus on providing more public services online in an ‘anytime, anywhere’ mode, leveraging the ubiquitous mobile phone as an instrument of economic and social empowerment, will create access to livelihoods and information for large swathes of our population, especially in rural and semi-urban areas.

With Covid-19, there has been a huge mindset shift towards digital education as it has become a necessity because of disruption of physical classes. Now, all such initiatives will become mainstream and will play an important role in the education delivery. S.Chand has also launched initiatives like Learnflix, Mylestone, etc., in last few years to empower India’s education system digitally. We are sure that these reforms will go a long way in making education accessible to masses across the country.