BackPandemic accelerated India’s digital adoption: Chandrasekaran
However, this adoption has not been equitable, says N. ChandrasekaranAccess to health-care and education should be a national priority and all should contribute to it
PremiumNEW DELHI : The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated India’s digital adoption, but this has not been equitable, Natarajan Chandrasekaran, the chairman of Tata Sons, said on Tuesday.
“If you take education, all the urban children who have access to a device or to a digital infrastructure could do online schooling, but, equally, the large number of children in rural areas who do not have access to devices, who did not have access to the digital infrastructure, lost years of schooling," he said. Chandrasekaran was in conversation with Anant Maheshwari, president, Microsoft India, at Microsoft’s Future Ready virtual conference.
Access to healthcare and education should be a national priority and everyone should contribute to it, Chandrasekaran insisted. “The government can put the policy infrastructure, but the corporate sector has to play its part," he said. A large section of the population is not participating in the market because of the lack of access, he noted. “Tech will enable that access and, in the process, expand the market significantly. More people will come into the formal economy," the Tata Sons chairman said.
India will lead global growth rates significantly for the whole decade, Chandrasekaran said. “India’s growth is going to be more fundamentally important. Even if global growth is good, it’s going to be a little bit behind the expected levels of 2021. India has a larger role to play," he said.
There are many things going for India, according to him. “The pandemic per se has not really impacted the long-term growth trajectory of India. It has just delayed it. The fundamental factors, whether it is the formalization of the economy, the youth, or more people coming into the middle income, all of these are totally intact," Chandrasekaran said.
In October 2021, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had projected that India’s gross domestic product (GDP) will grow at 9.5% and 8.5% during 2021-22 and 2022-23, respectively, making it one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, Mint reported.
Chandrasekaran also stressed the importance of making artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) work for the masses. “This view that AI and ML is the software people’s job or that ML is for the elite should go. The focus should be on making AI and ML work for everybody, for field workers, truck drivers, all kinds of professionals in urban areas and rural areas," he said.
Reports suggest that AI adoption can provide a big boost to the economy. According to an August 2021 report by RBSA Advisors, AI adoption can add $90 billion to the Indian economy by 2025.
India does not have the time or resources to keep building huge fiscal infrastructure, lamented Chandrasekaran. “If we have to achieve it now or in the near term, the only way is to use the digital connection to expand the capacity and the reach of the limited physical resources we have in terms of infrastructure, as well as in terms of knowledge and capability," he said.
Chandrasekaran also highlighted the need to reconstruct the global supply chain, which is controlled by a few countries. “India has an important role to play because of the skills, the opportunities, and the scale that we have," he said.
The pandemic revealed the problems in the global supply chain after the supply of several products, including semiconductors, was disrupted. India has been trying to reduce dependence on electronic imports and has launched production-linked incentive schemes to boost local manufacturing of smartphones, televisions, and laptops.
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