The Digital Renaissance

Keeping in line with the PM Narendra Modi’s dream of a digital India, BW Businessworld hosted the third edition of BW Businessworld Digital India summit on 26 May 2017(#DigitalIndiaSummit2017).

#DigitalIndiaSummit2017 supported the idea of democratising the digital revolution, had the top players in the digital ecosystem at the summit and addressed the audience on how far we have come and what is the road map ahead.

Ravi Shankar Prasad, Union Minister for Electronics, IT, Law and Justice along with Aruna Sundararajan, Secretary, Ministry of Electronics, IT and Telecom, were the chief guests at the summit.

In his address at the summit held in New Delhi, Prasad said technology has the power to empower underprivileged.

Basking in the glory of Modi government’s successful three years of governance, Prasad used the platform to count numerous achievements of the government. He said, “India is a great country for tech innovation, ready to be a $ 1 trillion economy by 2020.”

Complimenting BW Businessworld for the initiative, Sundararajan emphasised in her keynote, “No country in the world has more at stake in digital technologies than India because of the nature of our demographics and the fact that we are the youngest country of the world and the circumstance to leverage Infrastructure deficit and service deficit.”

Also present at the occasion were HE Nadir Patel, High Commissioner for Canada to India, Hemant Dabke,Vice President Strategic Industries, SAP, Indian Sub-Continent and Sanjeev Gupta, General Manager, Microsoft.

“Canada supports PM Modi’s dream of a Digital India, I think India and Canada can do a lot more together than they can do alone.”

“Let this be a tip of the iceberg in this digital growth relationship between India and Canada”, said Patel.

Dabke spoke on the technology trends that are driving ‘digital transformations’ and presented two case studies of SAP that further explained how the idea of smartly using technology could make a big difference to our lives.

“We are using technology to make our lives easier, we have come a long way and are trying to make lives easier,” he said.

Gupta shared Microsoft’s vision of moving towards a future powered by technology, he said that Microsoft is ready for all challenges and wants to empower every citizen to achieve more. “Right now, we are at the third stage of the fourth industrial revolution in the country. We want to use technology in the best and the most intelligent way and add to it the traditional wisdom to make lives easier.”

The summit covered important aspects on the digital ecosystems in India. In various panel discussions, experts discussed on ensuring physical and cyber security for digitally empowered nations, frameworks of digital payment in India, the challenges and threats posed, how information technology provides better healthcare services towards the last mile in the country etc.

Digital India summit 2017 was followed by an award ceremony where Vasundhra Raje was felicitated as the “Digital Person of the Year”, which was awarded by Ravi Shankar Prasad, followed by awards in 13 categories for extraordinary work in the digital space in the past year.  Digital India is a mega enabler of peer exchange and learning in a diverse context for the growing digital ecosystem in India and is a powerhouse for massive connections and networking across the country in the digital space to grow and understand opportunities and increase in the influence.

The conference also saw some important discussions on topics like ‘how technology is transforming Indian healthcare services, power of data and digital interpretation and India towards a smart manufacturing destination’. One such session by Rajpal Shekhawat, Ministry for Industry, NRI, government enterprise, DMIC, Rajasthan spoke about his government’s initiatives to make Rajasthan a very lucrative industrial destination.

Shekhawat said that his government is working towards making states a major digital economy. “The economy has to be accountable to the common man,” he added. Talking about Rajasthan, he stated that it has tremendous opportunity to grow. Shekhawat also included the popular ‘yojnas’ of his state in the speech.

Shekhawat said that through e-governance only, we will be able to attain good governance. Emphasizing on information technology (IT), he said that IT is better not only for governance but for business also. He also discussed about digital India and smart cities extensively in his speech. When asked about the smart cities of Rajasthan, he replied, “IT alone will not be able to make a city smart, but keeping them vibrant and intact will.” He said that everybody together needs to work for the success of the digital India while concluding his speech.

SK Bhagat who was on the panel discussed on ‘Ensuring Physical & Cyber Security for Digitally Empowered Nation.’ The other panelists were dignitaries such as M Nagarajan, Anil Kumar Singh, Vikas Yadav, Dr Sunil Gupta and Sudhir Mishra. Golok Simli acted as the Moderator of this panel discussion.

Bhagat, while mentioning physical security in terms of railway said, “Around 2.8 crore people travel via trains and there are 7,000 stations available in the nation. In spite of every security measure, there remains a possibility for a terrorist attack to happen.”

“Landmark efforts are required if we hope to avoid such attacks. Solutions from the private sector will aid in security against physical and cyber-attacks,” he said. He also emphasized on the availability of the railway app for people to use. Quoting PM Narendra Modi he added, “Railway offers both Gati (speed) and Pragati (progress) to the nation.”

Dr Sunil Gupta, CIO Ministry of Steel, Government of India, discussed the different perspectives and objectives of physical and cyber security. “It is important on how quickly you combat and get over with a cyber-attack. The primary focus should solely be on combating the attack,” said Gupta.