Budget that can unravel Technology

Joya Scarlata, Director of Digital Marketing, InterraIT

The other day, a business friend of mine observed that he had expected a lot for the ICT industry in the country from the recent budget 2023-24 and said  that it belied his expectations except for some customs duty changes effected for parts of mobile phones and other sundry tweaks. I did not react to his observations then since I did not go through the fine print between the lines. It took me a full day to understand the Budget in its entirety. After doing so, I thought my friend had gone off the mark in his observation about the Budget. I thought, every proposal in the Budget has an ICT angle expressed vividly or can be inferred.  

Let me start with an obvious reference to the ICT sector as reflected in the Budget papers. The Finance Minister referred to the illuminating example of mobile phones and how the government is planning to boost the mobile phones to make India a leading hub not only for its manufacturing but also for exports. To make the product more competitive, the government proposed to set right the anomalies in the customs duties governing the import duty on components. The rationale behind this is that higher duty on components would make the end-products-mobile phones costly and its competitiveness in the international market will be affected. The government has also made it clear that the same treatment will be meted out to other electronic products, such as TV’s, washing machines, air conditioners et al, where the government is tweaking the policy directions to make the performance of the electronics hardware sector same as that of the software sector. 

So far so good. But being involved in the software sector, almost at the same time, if not even before, it gained acceptance in India, I was compelled to  raise a point on behalf of the software developing fraternity: did the software sector, which made the brand India known to the outside world receive such an indulgence or accommodation? It has grown on its own without any support whatsoever. There can be valid reasons for the government to adopt a passive approach to the sector because the sector was knowledge and brain driven unlike the brick and mortar sector, where the electronics hardware industry belongs. I do not know whether that justifies the indifferent attitude towards IT and ITeS. But the fact is that the software segment overcame tough trajectories in the initial times, which no one could ever imagine. That is perhaps the strength of the industry and making it tick even without any support from the government. The good news is that the Centre is focusing on enhancing India’s digital infrastructure in the coming financial year.  Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman introduced a slew of initiatives to bolster digital infrastructure in the domains of agriculture, finance and education.

The Centre laid emphasis on digitization across many government schemes. The Digital Public Infrastructure for agriculture is one among them, which will focus on relevant information services for crop planning and health, improved access to farm inputs, credit, and insurance etc. 

The National Digital Library for young children and adolescents to facilitate availability of quality books will digitize one lakh ancient inscriptions in the first stage. To add to that is the focus on more fintech innovation.  The scope of documents in DigiLocker for individuals will be expanded. For MSMEs, an Entity DigiLocker will be set up for use by MSMEs, large business and charitable trusts for storing and sharing documents online securely. The Centre is also going to introduce a National Data Governance Policy, enabling access to  data for  start-ups and academics for further innovation in the tech space. 

What does this lead to? More opportunities for businesses of all sizes and hues. If large industries are getting involved in   such activities, they should rope in MSMEs and start-ups to undertake some of the activities instead of focussing on the entire chain of activities doing in-house. I think this linkage between the large and small enterprises has yet to emerge in the Indian context, the way in which it has emerged in the tech landscape abroad. There are numerous tie-ups between large and small companies in the west to develop technologies and even between large corporations, based on the concept of competition and cooperation.  I feel that in India also we should try these concepts that can bring considerable benefits to both. Even some of the large firms in India engaged in manufacturing can entrust development of the technology or device to small firms or start-ups, which can save a lot of resources and time. 

That takes me to another conundrum: what will be the future “Budgets like”. Before dwelling on that it is instructive to see how the Budgets will look like. Budget presentation has leaped in terms of technology. First and foremost, the present Finance Minister is the first person who read out the Budget from a tablet, which she did last year itself. Probably, the next Finance Minister will be presenting the Budget from the new Parliament House, which I am told has all digital systems in place, besides its cultural and artistic finesse. I am just speculating what the inside ambience is like. I expect that each member would be given a laptop or a notepad or both to participate in the parliament discussions. I do not know whether they would be allowed to operate these devices from home or in the precincts of their respective offices. In that case, we will be implementing the “ work from home”  concept in the parliament also. Besides these, there will be several meeting rooms, digital screens, a state -of -the- art library and more facilities in the new  House, which I am told, is a marvellous edifice.  Another notable feature will be digital security systems in place in the new building to make it fool proof from hacking. 

I mentioned all these to gauge the quantum of resources to be spent on electronic items. The House has to provide all these devices in-house necessitating huge expenditure benefitting the electronic hardware industry in the country. I cannot hazard a guess on the quantum of expenditure involved since one has to take a complete inventory of things that are needed. 

Yet another factor is the spillover effect on the state assemblies. Some of the state assemblies like Kerala have already provided laptops to every member and some of them are using the device to the hilt for doing the research, such as retrieving data, sending their questions, preparing for the house deliberations, culling out data, even during the discussions etc. I feel the trend set by the central government will be sooner or later followed by the state governments. One can easily extrapolate the resources to be spent on electronic hardware goods to fully furnish and to ensure cyber security to all the state assemblies and legislative wings of the union territories. 

It takes me to a hazardous guess, which may have some unintentional political undertones. That is not my purpose. I am just reflecting the possibility of a scenario, however impossible it may be. Before that, let me set a prelude to that narration. Those who are aware of the history of budget presentation in India, might be aware that till a few years ago, we had two Budgets, which were equally important: Railway Budget and General Budget. Later, they were merged into one. In the earlier General Budget, there used to be a para or two, at the last part of the General  Budget, which exclusively dealt with the Postal Budget. Earlier to merging railway budget with the general budget, that practice was discontinued. 

Apart from the Central Budget, each state and union territory have their Budget, address of the Governors at the assembly etc. In a federal democratic set up such conventions and traditions have their place. Just for example, in my wild imagination, let me visualize a single budget for India -for the entire country. At the same, let me make the emotional quotient before such submission, though I know for certain, it is against the federal principle: every region in the country, state and people should be a stakeholder in the Budget.