DEEP TECH FOR SMART INDIA 2.0

India, with the rest of the world, is reeling under the Covid-19 pandemic-lockdown-recession. However when it ends we can hope for a quick recovery that will fast-track us. That will happen only if we upgrade ourselves with Deep Tech, specifically the 3As and 1C

- Sunil Rajguru

The task is cut out for the government and industry to take India into the next stage of development from 2021 onward. A host of emerging technologies will upgrade India and make the lives of all its citizens that much better. A look at these technologies…

1. Automation: Artificial Intelligence (AI) will be the backbone of the post-Covid world. No touch technologies, the requirement of a real time rapid feedback and the absolute avalanche of data generated (further augmented by the Covid era) that can only be crunched by AI systems and not humans. While India creates a record number of engineers in the world, the same cannot be said of data scientists, which will form the most important community of tomorrow. We need far more courses in AI to beoffered by our universities, a far greater collaboration between academia, industry and government. There is a need to promote specific AI-oriented startups. There is very little AI research that is happening out of India. IT companies who already have a foot in AI would do well to further expand and accelerate AI skilling of their employees.

This has been recognized and NITI Aayog said way back in 2018 that India could add $1 trillion to its economy through integration with AI alone. This won’t happen till we create an army of data scientists, the way we did with software engineers. A tremendous first step has been taken with the New Education Policy (NEP) where children can be taught coding from sixth standard onwards. WhiteHat Jr. has shown great results with kid coding and has been snapped by BYJU’S, which is the largest EdTech startup in the world. Google is investing $10 billion in India in the next few years and will focus on Smart Education. That will secure tomorrow, but there is greater urgency required for today. When we talk of AI, it also includes the multiple disciplines of Machine Learning, Deep Learning and Natural Language Processing.