Digitalization acquires a critical element in the development of the modern economy, giving birth to an all new term- ‘Digital Economy’ as it promises to add a lot more within a short span of time. Therefore, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi says, – India’s digital economy is going to be one trillion dollar by 2025 and country’s digital economy and the infrastructure sector has a total potential for 2.5 trillion dollar, it startles very few.

Digitalization or the digital transformation of the economy is essentially introduction of information and communication technologies in a sector in order to increase its efficiency, productivity, extents and competitiveness, thereby creating an innovative high-tech digital economy. Introduction of digital technologies in various sectors of the economy, such as medicine, education, housing, community services, agriculture, manufacturing, service sector and others, is fast changing the face of these industries. However, digital transformation must be intentionally inclusive and thoughtfully designed and implemented to ensure that all are well taken care of and no one is left behind.

And in India, permeating all aspects of society and influencing the way we carry out economic activities, digital technologies are playing the role of a great equaliser by distributing the fruits of economic developments to all, thereby bringing sociological changes too. India’s inclusive digital model is narrowing the digital divide among people and bringing benefits of technology to all segments of people, as less affluent states leapfrog to catch up with more affluent ones on dimensions such as internet subscriber growth, density of internet infrastructure and common service centres.

Digital technologies such as data pooling, Artificial intelligence and others are now widely used to track and diagnose issues in agriculture, health, environment, logistics, jobs and skills market, e-governance, performing daily tasks such as navigating traffic, paying a bill, financial transactions and others. Through Digital India Programme, the Government of India is focusing much on creating a strong foundation of digital infrastructure and expanding digital access to all, creating tremendous economic value and empowerment of citizens as new digital applications permeate sector after sector. These efforts have made India the second-fastest digitizing economy amongst 17 leading economies of the world and country’s digital economy may generate productivity and output sufficient to support 55 million to 60 million workers in 2025.

India’s digital vision is based on citizen centric services, where transparency and accountability are ensured as it envisions a kind of digital transformation that allows everyone – whether in rural or urban areas and irrespective of their economic or social status, take ample benefits. However, to stay ahead in the race, we need to bring in changes in our approach to education and training by placing more emphasis on science, technology, engineering, maths, soft skills, resilience, skilling, re-skilling, up-skill of the people in general.

In human development, technology has always played a revolutionary role, changing the features of the labour force, creating a new face, form, pattern and process of works and bringing about wider economic and societal changes. Spurred by the digital revolutions, the current wave of changes appears to be having much more profound impacts over the humanity and its course than others happened in history.

To make way for the new the old has to be weaned off. New ways of content dissemination need to be explored and adapted to optimally utilize the prized resources. Spectrum being one of them. Talking about Natural Resource hardly brings attention to spectrum. But, telco revolution seen in the country and other parts of the developing world over last few decades has highlight the crucial nature of this national resource. Defining precious and priceless in the current world does culminates to spectrum, a natural resource available, exploited and in demand. And there is dearth of this exquisite resource. The haves and the have-nots both trying to secure and acquire depending on their position.

The backbone of the communication industry, spectrum plays an important role as basic support for infrastructure building and investment. Demand is ever increasing and the availability for use is highly restricted especially when talked in the context of free space. The wired backbone can support distribution from a central hub to downstream nodal hubs over the Optical fibres, or even to subscriber base but the real context is the distribution of Radio frequency spectrum in free space, the mobile cellular network, the terrestrial broadcast of Radio & Television services, satellite connectivity and direct to home.

The technological advancement which is in dire need of this resource has also provided the solution for optimum utilization of spectrum – and that is to Go Digital! Broadcast technology has also adapted itself by going Digital. The once analogy Cable TV network has now become Digital with not only the quality enhancement but also statistics generation for the subscriber base and their preferences. Television broadcasters have gone digital with the Direct to Home(DTH) technology.

Earlier where with analog transmission a bandwidth of 36MHz was required for quality transmission of one analog channel through satellite link, the current scenario is 20 to 24 TV Channels being combined digitally in the same 36MHz spectrum bandwidth. Further for pan-India connectivity for any content the need was for a large matrix of transmitter as one TV transmitter had a coverage range of around 70 Kms.

DTH has been a major effort by the Public Broadcaster in paving way for release of the crucial resource. Old and the outdated technology also lacks the industry support. As a service to the Nation, the Analog Terrestrial Transmitters of Prasar Bharati are being switched off to not only release the much demanded spectrum but also to pave way to the regional language services availability across the footprint. Dr L Murugan, Minister of State, Information & Broadcasting has rightly stated in his tweet on the 25 successful years of TRAI “On the occasion of its silver jubilee, addressed the officials today. Elaborated upon reforms undertaken at Doordarshan and how phase-out of Analogue Terrestrial Transmitters has resulted in availability of valuable spectrum.”

Another key development in the broadcasting scenario is the launch of Digital services over the IP Network. A network which has potential to add bandwidth being rigged as a cluster of Optical Fibres and Satellites. Digital over IP has a further significance in its reach, whereas in Terrestrial relay the reach depends on the hight of the tower and the power of the transmitting setup, and in satellite relay the reach is limited to the footprint area, the reach over the IP Backbone can be considered infinite on account of its availability across the World Wide Web. And, the current initiative of the Government of India to reach one and all in India and build brand India globally with timely and accurate information dissemination, Prasar Bharati News Services & Digital Platform (PBNS) has been continuously edging towards a meaningful presence for the people of India and the global Netizens.

Language is the most potent and important invention of ingenious mankind. Languages are the tool to code the stories of human endeavours evolving over edges. The diversity of languages around the globe beautifully signify the versatility, uniqueness and robustness of human societies. India is blessed with a heritage which nurtures diversity and its languages. As smartphones penetrate their way into even the remotest areas across the globe, a new market space is being created for different sectors, especially tech-based firms. Not only are the Hyperlocal trends and cultures being brought to the fore but regional populace is being observed and listened to like never before. Thus, regional relativity and digital connectivity together have made the need of running services multilingual, almost immediate.

Global-Tech and electronic giants, media firms, publishing houses, etc. are interested in Indian markets because of the untapped potential here and wide range of target group and consumer base. With more and more exposure to globalisation, digital gadgets, online buying and selling, social networking and strengthening of the digital payments ecosystem, Indian citizenry is waiting for seamless services and flexibility. The readiness is bringing up new multilingual versions of services across almost all sectors giving Indian culture and languages a special priority and global recognition. This will also result in more and more startups in India, more employment, better educational landscape, more networking, branding and advertisement, enhanced digital banking and mobile penetration, better digital literacy, all contributing eventually in boosting India’s economy exponentially.

The Linguistic Divide is bigger than the Digital Divide but the digital infrastructure is responsible for bridging the gap to create a bigger impact. India is a country with around 425 different languages and dialects. India also has a huge base of internet subscribers and the lack of content in local languages means that users’ experience is highly impacted. Aligning with this, recently Google has announced the addition of eight Indian languages including Sanskrit to Google Translate, with the view to increase the number of regional languages supported by its online multilingual translation service. Besides Sanskrit, the other Indian languages in the latest iteration of Google Translate are Assamese, Bhojpuri, Dogri, Konkani, Maithili, and Meiteilon (Manipuri), Mizo and Sanskrit. This update is part of a bigger plan wherein Google is further expected to add 24 Indian languages to Google Translate, which now supports a total of 133 languages used around the globe. In terms of the technology, these are the first languages that have been added using the zero-shot machine translation, where a machine learning model only sees monolingual text, meaning it learns to translate it into another language without ever seeing an example. Although Google says that this technology is not perfect but the company is working towards improving it. Though this update will only be supported in the text translation feature for now, Google may also work on rolling out voice to text, camera mode, and other features too.

India fought an unprecedented battle to overcome the systemic challenges induced by the COVID-19 pandemic. From expanding the healthcare infrastructure both physically and digitally to establishment of more and more AIIMS in the country at an unbelievable pace to achieving remarkable feats with the rollout of Vaccine Maitri Initiative and attaining the status of being called the ‘Pharmacy of the World’, India has emerged as the ‘Vaidya’ of the World, the knower of Health Sciences. Providing quality healthcare services to citizens during Covid was the central goal of the Indian government along with a focus on capacity building, which further helped New India to strengthen the healthcare sector in various domains.

Digital Health is one such area, where India is building strongholds to stand prepared for any future crisis. Today, the country’s healthcare is being imbibed with facilities like telemedicine and innovative methodologies that not only benefit patients but ease up service delivery for the pharma sector. India started e-Sanjeevani, a first-of-its-kind telemedicine initiative by any country during the covid pandemic, that has revolutionised the teleconsultation structure for all across the country. The success of this platform’s robust technology speaks for itself. In April 2022, the country achieved the milestone of a record 3.5 lakhs tele-consultations on a single day! Teleconsultation is possibly the future of India’s health systems, the concrete path towards establishing it has already been laid through Ayushman Bharat-Health and Wellness Centres that extend e-Sanjeevani services and facilitate a perfect platform to provide health services to the last mile.

India’s Unified Health Interface provides for an open network designed to enable interoperable digital health service delivery. Last year, PM Modi announced the roll-out of Digital Health IDs under the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission ( ABHA) which came out as another push towards building the Digital Health ecosystem of the country. Under this mission, 21.6 crore ABHA health IDs have been created and more than 26,000 health facilities have been connected so far.

Digital health innovations are being endorsed like never before as they assist in saving time, boosting accuracy and efficiency. With Artificial Intelligence, India is combining technologies in ways that are new to healthcare. NIRAMAI a startup based in Bengaluru designed an AI-Based screening device that can detect breast cancer at a much earlier stage than traditional methods or self-examination. Indian startups like these have put the nation on the world map of AI with their innovative technique. During the COVID period, CoWin platform, Arogya Setu, innovative PPE Kits, testing kits, advanced masks, etc. were some of the need-based innovations made by the National Health Authority, premiere institutes, and startups across the nation. Such breakthroughs aided by the government’s policy initiatives ensure that India will leapfrog in the digital space by leveraging technologies that provide digital services.

“Many countries praised the CoWin app, which was created for vaccination during the first COVID period and Nepal has now adopted India’s UPI for digital transactions. It will bolster interoperable real-time person-to-person (P2P) and person-to-merchant (P2M) transactions,” said a PIB release breaking the news of Nepal adopting India’s UPI for digital transactions. The development comes days after tourists & migrants to the United Arab Emirates with Indian bank accounts became eligible to do payments via UPI at various shops, retail facilities and other merchants in the UAE. Apart from these two nations, UPI Global is already live in Singapore and Bhutan, and would enable Indian travellers to make easy payments.

The scale and speed with which UPI operates in India is unprecedented with over 155 banks currently live on the UPI platform. UPI had enabled 39 billion financial transactions amounting to commerce worth $940 billion in the year 2021, a figure equivalent to around 31% of India’s GDP. As per recorded data, such a massive number of transactions haven’t happened on a single platform anywhere in the world. BHIM-UPI even achieved a record of 452.75 crore digital payment transactions to the tune of Rs 8.27 lakh crore till February 28, 2022.

To take digital payment to every nook and corner of the country, various steps have been taken by MeitY. Incentive schemes like the promotion of RuPay Debit cards and low-value BHIM-UPI transactions (P2M) facilitate Banks in building a robust digital payment ecosystem, promoting RuPay Debit cards and BHIM-UPI digital transactions, across all sectors and segments of the population, and further deepening digital payments in India. Additionally, Incentive/cashback schemes were launched by MeitY for changing the customer/merchant behavior for faster adoption of digital payments in India. Some of them were BHIM Cashback schemes for Individuals & Merchants, BHIM Aadhaar Merchant Incentive Scheme, BHIM-UPI Merchant Onboarding Scheme Merchant Discount Rate (MDR) Reimbursement scheme. Another step towards improving digital infrastructure was the scheme titled “Pradhan Mantri Gramin Digital Saksharta Abhiyan (PMGDISHA)” to usher in digital literacy in rural India.The introduction of QR scanning for making digital payments has also contributed to increasing the number of digital payments over the last few years because of the added ease and flexibility.

The success lies in the flexibility as UPI offers users to pay through easy QR codes and quick PINs, while the world still struggles and stays on traditional methods, such as card systems, which are still dominant in developed states across the globe. Check payments are still very common in various parts of the European countries. UPI is simple and doesn’t require users to carry anything extra other than their smartphones. RuPay and UPI, together are beating cash and card-based transactions in the country with whopping margins. The continuation of this trend may lead to them taking over the global competitors like American express, VISA and Mastercard, and other Global Giants that have ruled the Indian payment systems for decades. UPI is becoming popular in other foreign countries at a right time, as absence of a similar Open, Simple & Powerful payments interface may leverage India’s position in the foreign markets.

With growing digital indulgence and technological shift, the matters of privacy and secured networking and storage channels also become of prime importance and require equally robust support systems and mechanisation. Building and replicating a technology is one challenge. Another challenge, rather trickier one, is posed when all these technologies get interconnected to form a web of the country’s total digital & cyber undertakings and the state is met with piling needs to protect its cyber net. This vulnerability gives birth to the need of developing strong data protection systems and technologies.

One such data protection solution is the technology of ‘Quantum key distribution’ (QKD) which is a secure communication technology that uses quantum physics to construct a cryptographic protocol. It allows two parties to generate a shared secret key that is only known to them and can be used to encrypt and decrypt messages. For the first time in India, a team of DRDO scientists and IIT Delhi successfully demonstrated a Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) link between Prayagraj and Vindhyachal in Uttar Pradesh spanning over 100 kilometres, using a commercial-grade optical fibre that was already on the market. In the test runs, the performance parameters for this QKD were found to be repetitively within the reported international standards at sifted key rates of up to 10 KHz.

With this breakthrough, the country has demonstrated its own secure key transfer method, which can be used to bootstrap a military-grade communication security key hierarchy. The QKD technology will further enable India’s security agencies to plan a suitable quantum communication network with indigenous technology backbone.

A report by the Data Security Council of India (DSCI) highlighted India’s remarkable growth in the cyber space. It said that India’s cyber security industry nearly doubled in size amid the pandemic, with revenues from cyber security products and services growing from $5.04bn in 2019 to $9.85bn in 2021. India, its startups, various industries and public & private institutions are also getting acquainted and/or working on other tech-solutions and systems like the blockchain technology, Digital Forensics Technology, modern data science tools, vulnerability assessment & penetration testing tools and solutions, etc.

To build even better capacity towards this, the government has been making relevant provisions in the budget and various policies. Budget 2022, under GIFT-IFSC, talked about Data Centres and Energy Storage Systems including dense charging infrastructure and grid-scale battery systems to be included in the harmonized list of infrastructure. This will facilitate credit availability for digital infrastructure and clean energy storage. It also mentioned Blended Financing solutions where Government backed Funds like ‘NIIF’ and ‘SIDBI Fund of Funds’ have provided scale capital creating a multiplier effect. For encouraging important sunrise sectors such as Climate Action, Deep-Tech, Digital Economy, Pharma and Agri-Tech, the government proposes to promote thematic funds for blended finance with the government share being limited to 20 per cent and the funds being managed by private fund managers.