<div><em>Abdul Kalam's 2020 dream is long forgotten. Based on India's history, some feel Digital India will be a political shenanigan, writes <strong>Vishal Krishna</strong></em></div><div> </div><div>On the eve of India's 69th Independence Day, BW|Businessworld spoke to a couple of entrepreneurs/startups about the policies of the current government on Startups. The automatic reply was "We do not want to speak about any government because the next one may come and change the policy. They may even blame us for supporting the policies of the previous government. In such a coercive environment, Digital India is not going to be a reality. It has to be sustained for ages beyond political institutions," said the entrepreneurs who did not want to identify themselves. </div><div> </div><div>Digital India needs to do several things for it to succeed. It needs to use local language technologies, create transparency in agri-supply chains and government information services, it needs to create clear tax structures, for small retailers and manufacturers, to use technology, and benefit from it. Finally it needs to make India sustainable. </div><div> </div><div>Today Digital India is like "Elysium", only certain economically well off citizens have access to all services primarily because of their access to capital and English as their primary language. We at Businessworld are all capitalists. What is the use of capitalism if we as writers ourselves do not have access to information?</div><div> </div><div>Imagine the case of 500 million native language speakers and they are waiting to go digital. Will Modi show them the way or will his government make it easier for capitalists to get people to use information and make profits by changing lives? A combination of the two is already happening. Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Jio campaign, Nandan Nilekani's Aadhar project and the Government's will to fund startups are some examples of Digital India. It is a campaign whose foundation has to sustain the weight of India's population and the social extremities that we are used to.</div>
