India is at the cusp of transformational change-frenetic, interesting and complicated in equal measure. The current policy narrative, and indeed as some early effort on the ground shows, appears to be more urgent in its tone and intent, crucial to strengthen real interventions that spur economic growth and deliver social inclusion equitably.
There is an air of hope and excitement since many of these efforts are rooted in the prime minister's blueprint of "maximum governance through technology".
There have been a slew of measures that aim to usher in transformation in governance and accelerate socio-economic development through the optimum use of intelligent technologies and networks, including those that sit on the Cloud.
An important first step has already taken wing. Digital India-which Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced during his Independence Day speech-an umbrella programme under the Government of India's National Broadband Plan-has now been given a date for completion. The year is an ambitious 2018, just four years away.
The National Broadband Plan which was rolled out in 2006, if executed well, hopes to connect 250,000 village councils by December 2016. Every citizen will be able to easily access government services seamlessly integrated across departments and jurisdictions and available in real time on mobile phones and online in Indian languages.
Setting aside a little over an estimated $17 billion (Rs 1, 13,000 crores) for Digital India, the government is demonstrating its serious intent of giving shape to the rhetoric of its pre-election campaign trail to provide access to a public Internet to all citizens, create over 17 million direct and 85 million indirect jobs, and spur investment in electronics, services and manufacturing, and strengthen its ability to serve citizens much better.
The news is indeed very hopeful if one looks at the 10 new mission mode projects (MMPs) within the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP2.0) that broadly articulates the government's seriousness about ushering a government-wide transformation that delivers all public services electronically through integrated and interoperable systems.
This is expected to cover a range of areas, including financial inclusion, agriculture, geographic mapping, rural development, social benefits and language localisation.
In the next two years or so, we could witness 150,000 post offices being transformed into multi-utility centres and around 250,000 government schools getting broadband and free Wi-Fi, along with e-versions of all schoolbooks. Apart from digitally enabling citizens, the programme will bring in significant cost savings as far as the delivery of public services is concerned.
Public-private partnerships (PPPs) - where costs, risks and benefits are often shared - that sit on a digital backbone using new technologies like the Cloud are crucial for solving many of India's infrastructural challenges as well to capture the opportunity a rapidly growing economy presents. The modernization of India's railways, for instance, via a public-private-partnership model, is a narrative that has drawn widespread support within the country.
India's mission to build 100 smart cities is another step towards making Digital India a reality. The government plans to invest over $1.1 billion (or about Rs 7000 crores) to build 100 broadband-powered, smart and vibrant cities with private and international collaboration. It is a pragmatic vision, given that the Centre recognizes that urbanisation in India is reaching an increasingly unmanageable threshold, one which needs, among others, smart governance with technological interventions to improve institutional and physical infrastructure.
What are smart cities after all? At Oracle, we believe that cities that are economically, socially and environmentally sustainable are smart. Indeed, nowhere is this more relevant that it is in India.
By 2050, the UN says, India will add 404 million people to its cities. And, at 857 million people, India has the largest rural population in the world but one that is increasingly moving towards the city. To efficiently integrate good-governance solutions in the context of rapid urbanization, it is important for government officials, private sector leaders and ordinary citizens to recognise the need to overcome previous barriers to success such as individual interests, immature technology, lack of standardisation, and burdensome regulation.
For instance, city councillors and leaders of the Executive must understand the importance of using new and innovative technologies like cloud computing to transform governance. There are test cases on how well this is happening around India.
For instance, look at how cloud solutions have improved e-governance delivery in the state of Maharashtra, after the state government's department of information technology-in a partnership with the government-run BSNL and a private telecom firm Dimension Data- set up a "hybrid cloud" technology backbone to help automate all government-citizen interactions.
The project, which is called the Cloud Autoscale project, is being driven by the state government's department of information technology that runs all IT infrastructure and e-governance projects, including MMPs under the National e-Governance Plan, to achieve its objective to create better technology infrastructure and user-friendly citizen services using advanced ICT solutions like cloud technologies to enhance the quality of life in the state. There are many other great examples.
Beyond what is evident, on some further careful evaluation, I see the emergence of an amazing confluence of consumer behaviour in India, one that rides on the knowledge that emerging digital disruptors like Cloud computing, Big Data analytics and the Internet of Everything (IOE) are likely to allow citizens and governments alike to leapfrog into online and related services over the next five years or so.
This will open up an extraordinary opportunity for new applications and solutions underlying disruptive technologies like Cloud Computing and, in the Indian context, they promise to become the primary gateway of a life that is digital in more ways than one can imagine at the moment.
The aim of a new field known as social mobilisation treats the population of a country as a dispersed or distributed source of information to be tapped using new technology. It could potentially be used to help locate missing children, find stolen car or track down a suspect, or deliver effective governance in a broader context.
They have similar, if not exactly the same, operating environment like social mobilisation, in that, they too are helping organizations, both in the public and private sectors, keenly seeking ways to tap transformative opportunities that India's young, and increasingly connected, consumer demographic is opening up.
For India, the Cloud appears to be an obvious fit. However, before we can safely conclude that the Cloud can act as a catalyst for better governance in India, here are some questions that need careful evaluation?
1. Will the Cloud help India grow its economy, while enhancing its standing as a global leader in innovation?
2. Can it help remove barriers to costly technology, opening opportunities for new services and products?
3. Can it help make the mantra, 'maximum governance through technology', become a widespread reality-answering questions about skilling resources, educating stakeholders and making the delivery and implementation of governance easy, cost effective and sustainable?
4. Can it help the government achieve its broader inclusion goal to ensure that the poor are not left out of the country's growth story-when citizens, regardless of their socio-economic status, have access to credit and other citizen centric services and utilities, among others
A key objective will be to encourage small business owners, new entrepreneurs, non-profit organizations, academia, and government institutions to collaborate and share knowledge for governance to become effective.
It is equally important to acknowledge that cost remains a key consideration when the Cloud and its underlying applications are discussed in India, especially when thought within the context of the country's focus on achieving its development goals.
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