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.

 

One of the three key goals identified by the government during the budget 2022 is promoting digital economy & fintech, technology enabled development, energy transition, and climate action. To protect the interests of future generations and prepare them for upcoming global challenges, achieving these tech and sustainability goals is vital. The novel concept of Digital University is to provide world-class quality universal education with personalised learning experience at each Indian’s doorsteps. This collaborative University will be built on a networked hub-spoke model and content will be available in different Indian languages and ICT formats.

 

On education, training and skilling front, there are plans to develop quality e-content by the teachers as well as content in all spoken languages for delivery via internet, mobile phones, TV and radio through ‘Digital Teachers’. A DESH-Stack e- portal for on-line training and search facilities for jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities is to be launched.

In Agri and Allied domain, the focus is on preparing farmers for digital and hi-tech services, where a scheme in PPP mode as well as NABARD led co-investment model fund is to be launched for engaging all stakeholders meaningfully. For tech enabled operations management like crop assessment, digitization of land records, spraying of insecticides, and nutrients, discussions around ‘Kisan Drones’ is a very important step. With the Beating Retreat 1000 drone show and now with Kisan Drones, the government has shown willingness to put aside apprehensions of this evolving technology and embrace it to leap forward in large scale aerial survey and delivery. Drone-As-A-Service (DrAAS) is being envisaged across multiple sectors.

To build on key learnings of COVID pandemic handling, an open platform for the National Digital Health Ecosystem, consisting of digital registries of health providers and health facilities, unique health identity, consent framework, and universal access to health facilities is to be rolled out. Further, as the pandemic has accentuated mental health problems in people of all ages, to better the access to quality mental health counselling and care services, a ‘National Tele Mental Health Programme’ is to be launched. This will include a network of 23 tele-mental health centres of excellence, with NIMHANS being the nodal centre and International Institute of Information Technology-Bangalore (IIITB) providing technology support.

To reduce damaging effects of red tape by enhancing transparency and to reduce delays in payments, a completely paperless, end-to-end online e-Bill System is to be launched for use by all central ministries for procurements. Digitally signed bills can be submitted and tracked in this system online.

To continue the bolstering of digital payments in the country, financial support for the digital payment ecosystem announced in the previous Budget will continue in 2022-23. Further, 75 districts are going to get Digital Banking Units (DBUs) by Scheduled Commercial Banks for enhancing and promoting digital Banking experience. As talks have been on to introduce Digital Rupee, using blockchain and other technologies, this has now been confirmed to be issued by RBI starting 2022-23. This will lead to a more efficient and cheaper currency management system in the country. The newly proposed flat tax rate of 30% on virtual digital assets is a step towards acknowledging them and bringing the discussions mainstream.

These budgetary provisions are going to fuel the discussion and development of systems, processes and capabilities for combining humans and machines in the workplace. As 5IR is set to put an individual at the front and centre of the production process, it is imperative that India prepares its young to reap demographic dividends.

Framers of Indian Constitution have set forth an enormous and unique challenge of simultaneously completing India’s triple transition across social, political and economic fields. India is one rare country of this size and complexity that has taken on the challenge of getting on to the three transitions together. Technological advancements and India’s ability to execute gigantic projects have allowed the country to score many wins. Timely and transparent conduct of elections is well noted and appreciated across the world, so is the quick and large scale adoption of ATMs, digital payment methods and online train ticket booking systems. Recent success of world’s largest vaccination program highlights India’s increasing prowess of large scale digital enabled on-ground activities execution. One such domain on the horizon is faceless tax assessment.

Covid has disrupted many processes, yet it provided an opportunity, almost forcibly, to expand the horizons of digital-ready processes to flourish. By eliminating the physical interface between assessee and the tax officer to the extent technologically feasible, the faceless scheme launched in 2020 has led to a very high level of transparency to the process of assessment of income tax. This has resulted in significant time and energy savings for the taxpayers and brought in transparency and credibility to the government. Close analogy to this is online ticket booking, where an individual had to spend hours queueing up for tickets or pay hefty commission to agents. As online ticket booking had shown that the Indian consumer is savvy, so is online faceless assessment showing that Indian taxpayers are savvy.

National e-Assessment Centre (NeAC) facilitates and centrally controls e-assessment. Regional assessment centres are in cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Pune, Bangalore and Hyderabad. Each of these centres have four units – assessment, verification, technical and review. Assessment units identify issues, seek information and analyse material to frame draft assessment orders. Verification units make enquiries, examine books of accounts and witnesses, and record statements. Technical units provide services such as advice on legal, accounting, forensic, information technology, etc. Review units check whether or not the facts, relevant evidence and low and judicial decisions have been considered in the draft order.

Surely, the digitisation of tax processing requires individuals and businesses to have the documents and information in electronic form, as well as the credentials of income tax portal to be regularly used for notices and filings. What has all this resulted into – “CBDT issues refund of over ₹1,62,448Cr to more than 1,79,00,000 taxpayers from 1st April, 2021 to 24th Jan, 2022. Income Tax refund of ₹57,754Cr have been issued in 1,77,35,899 cases, and Corporate Tax refund of ₹1,04,694Cr have been issued in 2,23,952 cases. This includes 1.41Cr refunds of AY 2021-22 amounting to ₹27,111Cr.”

Faceless assessment And Taxpayers Chartered provisions are paving way for manifold increase in number of filed returns and reduction of scrutiny needs. The structure of faceless taxation shows the modular approach to structure such tasks, perhaps the recipe for large scale implementations!

Posts of CEO, CTO and CFO have just been advertised for ISM. India Semiconductor Mission(ISM) is an independent and specialised nodal agency being set up by the Government of India with a mandate to drive strategies for the development of a sustainable semiconductor and display ecosystem. These and many other posts are expected to rope in global experts to contribute to nation-building.

Today’s digitization race-winning strategy requires new electronic systems whose power consumption is low and battery backup is high, speed is very high and new designs should roll out fast, and of course, all of it should be affordable for the masses.

VLSI or very large scale integration is the stream of electronics that helps in achieving these systems by shrinking their size that is used in remotes of television, cell phone, microwave oven, AC, washing machines, Cars, space ships, aviation, weather forecast, satellites, defence and many other domains of modern life.

So far India manufactures chips for defence and space research at fabs present within IISc, SCL Mohali, and few others places. Large scale manufacturing for consumer electronics and other high-tech industries though is altogether a different ball game. The technical complexity of the domain, huge investment requirements, availability of the purest form of silica ( raw material), very stringent cleanliness requirements at the manufacturing site as well as huge water and uninterrupted power supply needs of this industry pose a real challenge for India to match the competition of Taiwan, South Korea and China.

IIT Kharagpur has one of the first VLSI labs in India, where R&D efforts in this domain and chip design seem to have come to an age with the Centre of Excellence in Nanoelectronics at IIS Bangalore, IIT Bombay and other institutions doing excellent work. Domestic semiconductor consumption has been consistently growing at a healthy rate and the need of the hour is accelerated progress on setting up chip manufacturing companies (also known as fab). In addition to meeting the challenges of technical complexity, Investment requirement is huge for any semiconductor fab unit. The electronic sector is one of the domains where 100% FDI is allowed under automatic route. Chipmakers are likely to get support beyond normal PLIs if they are really committed to India.

Aatmanirbharta Bharat is clearly aiming to cover the lost ground and make India one of the leaders in this essential domain of modern civilisation. Ministry of Electronics and Information (MeitY) has sought applications from 100 academia, R&D organisations, start-ups and MSMEs under its Chips to Startup (C2S) Programme. A Cabinet committee chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi had initiated this program to usher in a new era in electronics manufacturing by providing a globally competitive incentive package to companies in semiconductors and display manufacturing as well as design.