Unifying India through Melodious Voice

She will not speak again but her songs will continue to represent the mood of the nation for generations to come. Bharat Ratna Late Lata Mangeshkar (1929-2022) will remain perhaps the most iconic figure instrumental in the amalgamation of British provinces, various princely estates, zamindari estates and Jagir into one nation, India.

Over the last 70 years, her songs became part of everyone’s everyday life, as thanks to successive technological advancements, music is in office, while walking, alone or with a friend, to relieve stress, to refresh the mind, to celebrate, to mourn – and she sang them for all occasions. It is a scientific fact that Music does wonders to our mental, physical and spiritual advancement. Lataji‘s songs gave us mental peace, satisfaction, positive thoughts, increased attention, enhanced productivity and creativity. Her songs accompanied Indians on their walks, gym and yoga classes and surely helped with health, as research has shown that blood flows more easily when music is played and it relieves symptoms of depression, stimulates memories, and manages pain. Patriotism is a natural outlet of spiritual progress, and her songs have been the instrument to honour mother India.

Lataji treated music as a sacred ritual, as she removed her footwear every time she entered a recording room. She was trained in Bhendibazar gharana under Ustad Aman Ali. Her rendition of songs after Indian classical music definitely helped in preserving the cultural identity of the land. She sang for stars of Hindi and over two dozen other languages, as every female actor wanted to lip sync to her songs, every music composer, director wanted a piece of her work. Her family? List of siblings consisted of all-legendary singers and composers-Asha Bhonslae, Meena, Usha, and Hridaynath Mangeshkar.

PM Modi represents every Indian when he said, “I am anguished beyond words. The kind and caring Lata Didi has left us. She leaves a void in our nation that cannot be filled. The coming generations will remember her as a stalwart of Indian culture, whose melodious voice had an unparalleled ability to mesmerise people.”

Truly, She leaves a void in our nation that cannot be filled.

 

COVID Vaccination – Front Row Seat

Indian media is celebrating the words, “I appreciate your government’s efforts as it has selflessly donated nearly 8 million immunizations with at least 38 countries.” in a letter received by India’s Ambassador to the USA. It has been written by US Congresswoman Joyce Beatty who is the leader of the Black Caucus, an influential Congressional group championing human rights and help to poor and needy. India has surely leaped into the front-row seat in the post-Covid world order due to its large-scale implementation capabilities demonstrated in handling the pandemic while considering the welfare of all at home with Sabka Saath and abroad with Vaccine Maitri.

Covishield, Covaxin, ZyCov-D, Sputnik V, COVOVAX, CORBEVAX vaccine, and now Sputnik light in the pipeline – India surely has managed to be on top of vaccine development, manufacturing, transportation, and administration at an unprecedented level. As against 542 million doses in the USA, India has managed to administer 1,689 million doses at a war footing. Further, India has supplied around 150 million doses to 98 countries (Covishield, Covaxin, Covovax).

This has not been an easy ride for sure that India has braved 3rd wave very effectively and is almost back to normalcy. Starting with a lookout of only 450-550 million doses in Nov2020 and huge concerns of geographical mobility difficulties, lack of cold storage facilities, and other factors leading to vaccine wastage India had a mountain to move. Fearing the crowding in coming to vaccination centres was genuine and caused valid reluctance.

Walk-in coolers and walk-in freezers helped in building over 29,000 storage points all over India. Leadership across the levels engaged in virtual meetings for hours on end every day with vaccine manufacturers, vaccine transport agencies, storage centres, cold chain points, and COVID Vaccination Centres. This was done to ensure that every drop of the available vaccines is used as optimally as possible.

Training the ASHA workers at war footing, developing CoWIN platform, and deploying effectively to manage vaccination efforts were masterstrokes. Vaccine Hesitancy was actively resolved by leading from the front as Prime Minister Narendra Modi shared images of taking vaccines early morning at AIIMS. Misinformation and fake news combatting were done by engaging in talks with the community and religious, political leaders. Door-to-door campaigning, ‘Har ghar dastak’ involved health workers, nurses and teachers – which went door to door, counselling and enrolling people, and issuing appointment tokens for vaccination.

On 18th September 2,50,10,390 covid vaccines were administered. This is 10,42,100 per hour or 17,368 per minute or 289 doses per second. None of the developed nations have been able to come anywhere close to this scale and is a testimony of transforming the Public Health Care system under Ayushman Bharat. India has shown a large-scale implementation capability not seen anywhere else in the world, and India does it with the ethos of ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’, as appreciated by the black caucus.

 

QR Code: Welcoming the Next Revolution


In 1951, the world was introduced to a game-changing technology by Norman Joseph Woodland and Bernard Silver, when they invented Barcode, the thin and thick black bars that are like limbs to each and every product worldwide even today. For seven decades, Barcodes have ruled the production world as it allowed it to track products and inventory like a piece of cake. The inception of QR scanning is so revolutionary that if recognised critically, it is even ready to replace the present system, along with opening doors to a completely scan-based lifestyle & businesses.

 

Today QR scanning is widely used globally for making payments, as evident even in rural India, for restaurant menus, for tracking and storing details of various product, companies, stakeholders and clients, in media like hyperlinks, in bookings of flights, shows, trains etc., in hirings, computing, record-keeping, buying, selling, directing, sharing and what not. In 2019, over 73% of India’s total web traffic had come from mobile phones. Internet penetration rate in India went up to nearly around 45% in 2021. This rate of Internet literacy in the country and access to smartphones have led to the massive adoption of QR Codes. Hence, from product packaging to billboards, to walls of buildings, one can find various types of QR Codes almost everywhere.

 

Ever since the launch of UPI, India has experienced a paradigm shift in Digital payments. People relied on it for fund transfers (especially post-demonetization), leading to a significant rise in QR code adoption by merchants, customers and others. A July 2020 report of an RBI committee on ‘The analysis of QR Code’ said, “Over 20+ million UPI QRs deployed in the market (July 2020). The volume of digital payments using UPI QR are approximately over 250 million on a monthly basis.” The committee even suggested that the Government should allow a lower controlled interchange instead of zero MDR on QR code & even offer tax incentives to merchants to let QR code transactions flourish even more in the country.  Covid-19 has fueled the future in digital payment, especially in Asia. According to McKinsey, there has been an 80/20 rise in digital payments. This indicates that the digital user base has seen a 20% increase, 80% of which has been registered during the peak of Covid-19.

 

Apart from payments, these dotted codes are helping brands globally to elevate their position in the market. They are being used widely for imbibing products and events information, for availing offers, channeling traffic on social media, and even app downloads. Almost all of the Fortune 500 companies have already added QR Codes to their marketing stack since the last few years. With its unique feature to work through its print on a physical paper, it is also becoming a tool of mass awareness and learning too.

 

Digital tools are largely governing the operationalisation of the modern world, especially metropolitan and urban settlements. The second decade of the 21st century has beautifully led the world to kickstart its transition into a digital era, letting people across the globe to accept technological assistance, first in profession, then in governance, then personalization and now even in core household operations. One such digital tool is QR (quick response) Code, which is as powerful as the digital technology itself.

 

RBI Digital Currency

“Introduction of Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) will give a big boost to the digital economy. Digital currency will also lead to a more efficient and cheaper currency management system. It is, therefore, proposed to introduce Digital Rupee, using blockchain and other technologies, to be issued by the Reserve Bank of India starting 2022-23.” FM Nirmala Sitharaman announced during her budget 2022 speech. Apart from RBI, Central Banks of Singapore, Thailand, Sweden, England, Canada, Venezuela, Uruguay, and a few other countries have been working towards implementing respective Central-bank-backed digital currencies.

It was a big leap in human civilisation to move away from the barter system towards a centralised monetary system, which has started with Gold and other kinds of coins had moved on to gold-backed legal tenders, and finally evolved into a Fiat currency. Rather than equivalent gold holding, a Fiat currency is backed by full faith and credit of the issuing government of the Reserve Bank or Central Bank of the country. Transactions in these Fiat currencies happen in physical notes and coins form or via a bank account, for on paper or digital transactions. A CBDC is in the token form of Rupee. It is an electronic record of the country’s official currency and can prove to be crucial towards goals of financial inclusion. Transactions of a CBDC do not necessarily need one to have a bank account.

Financial inclusion is critical for strengthening the abilities of the poor to tap all opportunities to come out of poverty, and to a vast majority in India, the middle class, to fruitfully utilise nurturing ecosystem of entrepreneurship and skill development in their chosen domain. The zero balance requirement concept for bank accounts opened under Prime Minister Jan Dhan Yojna has been critical in bringing banking services to millions of unbanked Indians. RBI-Digital-Currency will be truly a shot in the arm to the efforts of bringing the unbanked into the financial system. As FM noted, the added benefit of the CBDC would be simplifying the implementation of monetary and fiscal policies and a more efficient and cheaper currency management system.

 

Planning for a VUCA World?

VUCA had become part of our lexicon for quite some time, but Covid has brought it to the realisation that the world has truly become volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. In this context, the National response mechanism for short term crisis management, as well as long term strategy formulation, is under scrutiny across the globe. The traditional sequence of problem formulation, detailed planning and bureaucratic way of implementing the steps was put to test, and it failed miserably during the pandemic. What worked though, can be termed as Agile model, where a corridor with feedback based course correction mechanism is the target instead of a rigid set goal.

Indian Economy has shown strong resilience and has bounced back from the crisis of COVID-19, yet the recovery has not been uniform across all sectors of the economy and definitely not across demographics. Various courses have been completed without even meeting teachers, trainers, peer groups, research target groups etc. Poor families who have lost a working member are going to need help from younger members, esp. young girl child to take care of chores at the cost of going to school.

To add to the micro-economic level issues, the pandemic induced shifts in technology, supply-chain dynamics, and generic consumption pattern changes are increasing the uncertainty.

What is of help though is the feasibility of real-time or near real-time feedback mechanism using the latest tech developments. This is where the emphasis on reinforcing the digital economy is critical as done in Budget 2022. Starting from Digital University to ease the learning of basic skills to advanced technologies, to the concept of using satellites to ascertain the extent of rural vs urban inhabitants, agri vs other usage of the land, environmental impact of infrastructure development and other activities, almost an end-to-end use cases have been identified for deeper engagement of citizenry. An important aspect is to keep a learning attitude and positive mindset to encourage one and all to strive for a better future.