My advice to Mr Modi on making Digital India a success
I agree with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision of connecting every Indian all across this great country digitally. Connecting every Indian on a common platform will finally create one country. Each Indian will be able to talk to another Indian somewhere, create groups on a common platform, at low cost synchronously and asynchronously.
I think that is a fantastic thing to happen. It is going to happen by itself, Modi is only going to accelerate the trend. 95 per cent of India is connected by wireless, 70 per cent of Indians already have a mobile device, and 25 per cent may be having a smartphone. In five years' time everyone will have a smartphone because the cost of a smartphone has come down. You now get a smar phone for Rs 3,000-4,000. It can connect you to the internet and with the Reliance Jio, the big beast coming into the marketplace, every Indian will be equipped with a smartphone.
Modi had to go to America because by going there he ensured that Digital India became a big global event. Going to the Silicon Valley, the hub of all innovation and change in the United States, suddenly brought Digital India centre stage and suddenly made it a big event. Having our leader go talk outside the country with the cheering locals creates a greater impact than doing it here because this country has got so many malcontents and leftists who decry anybody making a positive remark.
Many Indians are pessimistic, we need optimism. Young people are optimistic; it is the older generation that is pessimistic because they have got nothing to lose. The youth is innovative, creative, brimming with great energy and passion and they want to connect. They are already a part of Digital India.
Bringing giants like Google, Apple and Microsoft to India will not harm the indigenous companies. Google decided to equip 500 railway stations with WiFi free of cost. Nobody is preventing Airtel or Reliance of doing the same thing. Anybody can go to the railway stations and decide that I am going to put my router and provide internet for free. Since it is free for all, the question of whether Google does it or Airtel does it, does not matter. The airwaves cannot be monopolised. We do not have to worry about monopolisation of a certain market, but what we do have to worry about is that these players becoming so big that they stifle innovation.
But digitally this is a declining trend. Microsoft was a dominant player ten years ago and now it isn't, Apple could soon be on its death row with much more innovation coming up elsewhere and Facebook could be overtaken by WhatsApp and is no longer considered cool. Creative destruction is the norm in innovation. New innovations will come up, somebody will scale up, there is a lot of disruptive capital available, ie; capital that makes money by making Facebook valuable can also make money by destroying it and replace it. Indian philosophy of creative destruction is dominating the world like never before so we have nothing to worry about bigger companies invading our indigenous markets.
The only danger I see to the country is stifling of innovation by mindless control especially in the education sector. We have to free the universities from the control of the government, the UGC and the AICTE. We must let the universities be independent and autonomous. We must give the youngsters the sole responsibility of deciding what they want to do with their careers and not dictate their choices. My fear is that we may not move fast enough to liberate the universities from the stranglehold of the state.
If Modi comes up and seeks my advice for Digital India, I would tell him that Digital India has to work in the following sequence:
1. Make sure connectivity reaches all points of India.
2. Young children must get access to low-cost, affordable and high-quality tablets with preloaded multimedia that has rich educational content with WiFi/4G right from 6th standard which is much more effective than the ADARSH tablets the government was trying to launch. Giving the young children access will change their perspective about a lot of things.
3. Put more and more government services onto the web.
4. Remove the poor people from the tyranny of the government. The government is the biggest oppressor of the poor in this country. Government has been captured by corrupt elements. The rich and the powerful can manipulate the system and the poor cannot. A direct benefit transfer is fantastic, because the money is going to the poor and they can decide how to use it. Poverty to my mind is simply the lack of purchasing power. Empower the poor.
5. Lower the cost of doing business in the country. Create a common market; make sure compliance requirements come down and document requirements comes down.
6. Create a space for start-ups and innovators to thrive.
7. Government must open the market to buy from smaller companies rather than get tenders from big companies because in almost all government tenders the terms and conditions are rigged by consultants or one company who writes the terms, because the government lacks the capacity to run the tenders.
(As told to Ursila Ali.)