Tech for Inclusive Growth
— Rajesh Nambiar
Several years after technology has almost taken over our daily lives, no one any longer questions the impact of technology in the commercial and financial worlds. Every individual and every corporation has benefited from this several times over. As India propels ahead into the future, “Digital”will be the coreto everything and will determine our country’s well-being and growth.
However, it is still only the tip of an iceberg. With over a billion people and slated to be the most populous country in the world soon, India has perhaps the biggest potential to use technology to improve the social fabric of its citizens. With significant capabilities in both telecommunications and software, we leverage new digital technologies and platforms not just to increase efficiency and productivity, but also to reach unserved and under-served segments of our society. Of course, this also boosts economic growth and development, generates jobs and improves quality of life and ensures access to next generation services for a much broader and inclusive society across the country.
Whether it be to enable differently abled people to enter the mainstream or to better the quality of life of a farmer in remote villages or to bring high quality education to rural children, it is technology we will turn to.
It is a matter of pride for India that today’s technology is focused on reaching the benefits of technology to each and every one of its citizens. The government is focused on providing better infrastructure to ensure that remote villages are connected by technology. Faster speeds, better bandwidth, low latency - the next era of 5G technology is only going to aid efforts already in play. NGOs are increasingly looking at technology to bring a better quality of life to the people they work with.
For instance, farmers in parts of Uttar Pradesh are increasingly adopting social media to get their job
done effectively, but this is just the beginning. India’s landscape is vast and varied; comprising of different terrains and different soil properties. Without effective methods for measuring and reacting to varying needs, farmers have been forced to manage all the landscapes as if they were uniform.
Technologies such as internet of things (IoT) and data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) have played key roles in smart farming. Farmers can now make informed decisions and prepare a site-specific management program taking into account the unique characteristics of each piece of the landscape. IoT has been a great tool for farmers in water management, livestock safety, crop maturity monitoring, stock communication and aerial crop monitoring. A key area where technology can do immense good is in the field of rural education, especially in its role to bridge the ‘education inequality’. possibility increases from just video to remote diagnosis of complex cases and even in performing tele-surgeries in remote locations.
There are so many examples where technology could bring profound changes to the under-served citizens – Have you noticed the changes technology has begun to make in the lives of differently abled people?Technologies like 5G are expected to extend beyond the traditional voice and data services. The characteristics of 5G network, namely, increased reliability, lower latency, higher throughput, increased connection density would enable massive commercial deployments of technologies such as IoT, AI, AR/VR in addressing societal issues in sectors like energy management, water management, healthcare, retail, manufacturing and agriculture.