And for a Friday at the end of a successful G20 with India’s leap in its unique digital capability on public display, some thoughts….. some musings…..
The biggest takeaway of the recently concluded G20 is the acceptance of the Western and Developed World of the huge leaps made by India in the digital technology space, the most outstanding being DPI (Digital Public Infrastructure). The scope, scale and applications is mind boggling. DPI is a set of layered large capabilities built over last many years in the Public Domain. It’s decentralised, low cost, has interoperability and at population scale of 1.4 bn Indians, oofff, absolutely incredible. It’s the basis of e-kyc, based on which more than 500 mn Jan Dhan bank accounts were opened. Almost 99% of Indians have been provided with a unique biometric identification – the Aadhar Card and with more than 750 mn Smart phones already owned, the way forward is geometric progress at a scale and speed which none can predict. On this public DPI, many applications have been developed. Each of them is a Game Changer. ONDC – Open Network for Digital Commerce, NDEAR – National Digital Education Architecture and particularly relevant to the very large MSME sector in India, the OCEN – Open Credit Enablement Network. This codifies the flow of credit between borrowers, lenders, credit distributors and aggregators, enabling better and easier access to credit for medium, small and individual businesses. India’s Tech capability with a huge pipeline of continuous supply of Human Resources is unmatched in the world. No wonder 80% of the Fortune 500 companies have some critical parts of their R&D activities based out of India.
As India emerged as 5th largest economy, some of the western press highlight the poverty, hunger and refer to low per capita income in $ terms that’s most irrelevant. In India, already there is a huge middle class of more than 300 mn people and growing with income ranging upto 30 lakhs which at purchasing power parity (PPP) basis is as good and the poor and marginalised are beneficiaries of the biggest welfare schemes in the world. Free food and rations to every family with a yellow ration card. 800 mn people get free rations. No Indian need go hungry. No country can match at this scale.
India is the world’s largest democracy and the cost of democracy in a developing country has to be paid in terms of many corrupt politicians, corrupt Babus and more corrupt ever eager to bribe sleazy businessmen. But let’s not get discouraged. Let the honest continue to build India, the hard working way, the law abiding way, the SEEGOS way.