At a CII Conference on ICT Innovations for Next Generation, organized by Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), senior ICT Industry leaders pledged to innovate and offer the most advanced integrated technological solutions required by the government to support the Government of India's 'Digital India' Programme. The 'Digital India' Programme envisions creation of ICT infrastructure like high speed Internet at all 2.5 lakh gram panchayat level, on demand availability of government services like health and education and digital literacy of citizens.
"To complement Government's programme of digital inclusion, we must innovate and offer the most advanced solutions to the government which integrate data analytics, GIS, Biometrics etc to enhance governance, food, health, physical and cyber security, energy, strengthen education, healthcare, transportation and other public delivery systems to the last mile and improve the standards of living of the people, especially in rural areas. It is only through PPP model that the vision can be accomplished," said Pramod Bhasin, Founder & Vice Chairman, GENPACT India (P) Ltd.
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"The programme can be successful in attaining last mile connectivity to more than 635,000 villages, 250,000 panchayats, 6,000 blocks and 672 districts, 1.2 million government schools, more than 50,000 public and rural libraries, more than 100,000 departments and public agencies, if and only if the ICT industry executes and manages the desired projects and provides out of the box solutions reducing the high cost of broadband in India, which is presently 4 times that of China", further added Bhasin.
"The government has identified broadband and mobile networks as key growth pillars under Digital India, but it will serve the purpose by bringing about process improvements, removing capacity constraints, adopting efficient operational models and by leveraging the emerging technologies like Cloud, Social Media, Analytics and mobility", highlighted Bhasin.
"India should aim to replicate the Countries like Brazil, Singapore, China etc and create Wi Fi zones across cities and villages. It would not be done by single large IT Company, but by thousands of small startups of young entrepreneurs who are willing to take risks. Hence we need to create an enabling eco system which renders entry of new young Indian players easy in ICT sector. If we support th youth with conducive policies and incubator facilities initially, they can create cutting edge solutions and it would also help fight the menace of unemployment", emphasized Bhasin.
"Under this programme, various projects worth about Rs 1 lakh crore would be undertaken to transform the country into a digitally empowered and connected knowledge economy. CII would like to work with the government and figure out the Indian ICT industry can help in implementing this vision of a digital India", shared Bhasin.
The senior ICT leaders at the CII Conference included Pramod Bhasin, Founder & Vice Chairman, GENPACT India (P) Ltd; Saurabh Srivastava, Chairman, Steria India Ltd; Dr Jaijit Bhattacharya, Partner, Infrastructure and Government Services, KPMG; Sudhir Aggarwal, Senior Director, IBU - Public Sector Oracle India; Rupinder Singh, Executive Vice President, Datawind Innovations (P) Ltd; Atulya Chandra, Regional Director - South Asia, Honeywell Security Group; R Ramanan, Managing Director & CEO, CMC Ltd; Jayant Krishna, Principal Consultant & Regional Head, Tata Consultancy Services Ltd; Krishna Ramaswami, Senior Vice President, Zensar Technologies Ltd etc.
