Increased emphasis on tech solutions in new areas
NEW DELHI: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, in her budget speech on Tuesday in parliament, indicated that the government plans to implement technology-driven solutions in a wide range of areas including agriculture, logistics, infrastructure development and finance.
For instance, instead of providing incentives for the development of blockchain technology within the country, Sitharaman announced the formation of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) -- a move that has been in the works for a while now.
“Overall, the digitisation theme is being carried forward and will be the backbone for new investments in education, healthcare, agriculture, banking, payments, and also to streamline government procurement & payments,” noted P.N. Sudarshan, partner and TMT leader, Deloitte India.
In her budget speech, Sitharaman also said the government will launch a public private partnership (PPP) scheme for “delivery of digital and hi-tech services” to farmers.
“Use of ‘Kisan Drones’ will be promoted for crop assessment, digitisation of land records, spraying insecticides, and nutrients,” she added.
Further, the Budget also announced the creation of a fund that will be facilitated through National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard), to finance startups and “rural enterprise”.
To be sure, the government also announced the issuance of electronic passports, or e-passports, which will use embedded chips. These are set to roll out in 2022-23, and should facilitate contactless immigration and more. Countries like Singapore, etc. already have scanners which allow passports to be scanned.
The focus on implementing technology wasn’t limited to business use cases alone. The minister also announced a Unified
Logistics Interface Platform (ULIP), which will be driven by an application programming interface (API) to facilitate the “efficient movement of goods through different modes, logistics cost and time”.
Reskilling was another focus area. According to Nitin Bansal, MD, India, at telecom firm Ericsson, the Digital Ecosystem for Skilling and Livelihood stack, or the DESL-Stack e-portal, announced in the Budget will help upskill Indian youth “as per industry needs” and help fill talent and skill gaps in the industry.
Experts cautioned that implementation will hold the key to success.
“Most of these (policies) are about adopting or operationalising mature tech -– e-passports have been well in use worldwide... And it’s high time we got 5G rolling, and so yes, I fully expect to see spectrum auctions happen,” said tech policy analyst Prasanto K Roy.