Like all the previous budget of union government, the 2019 too has many elements of technology. During his 2019 budget speech, Finance Minister Piyush Goyal emphasized on the role of technology stating that tech-driven programs like Digital India, Government eMarket Place (GeM) and startup India initiatives have improved government efficiency, brought transparency and saved significant money.
The minister announced that union government will setup a National Centre for Artificial Intelligence, which will work to improve India’s technology landscape by creating real use cases of AI in different sectors including health care, education and agriculture. Niti Aayog had published a paper last year proposing three-pronged approach to imbibe AI in different sectors including setting up of AI centre in the country.
According to Jaijit Bhattacharya, President, Centre for Digital Economy Policy Research, AI is a much needed requirement specially at times when countries like US and China are taking lead in AI technology. “AI will be critical from a national sovereignty perspective and we are already delayed in taking concrete steps in adopting AI. We cannot afford to be left behind in the AI race with China taking an early lead,” explained Bhattacharya.
The proposed National Centre for Artificial Intelligence is expected to be made operational by July. The centre will be part of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and will work in collaboration with the National Informatics Centre (NIC) and the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), said different reports.
According to Sangita Reddy, Joint Managing Director, Apollo Hospitals Group, the announcement of a National Centre on AI is a big positive. “AI today has great potential in transforming and designing new tools which will equip doctors in the fight against non-communicable diseases,” she said.
Agreeing with Ms Reddy, ixigo CTO Rajnish Kumar said that the new national scheme announced on AI is a futuristic scheme which will promote the use of technology and digitisation. “The government’s efforts in providing the necessary AI support required by startups, further emphasizes the role that new technologies will play in the development of the economy,” Kumar said.
“The vision of the government to make India a 5 trillion dollar economy in another 5 years and 10 trillion dollar in 8 years would primarily bank upon a very strong IT services industry in India, emerging tech startup ecosystem and reforms in the governance and in the process of achieving this vision, India would get transformed it into a product nation. The wealth so created would percolate to the last man and per capita income would increase significantly thereby making the life of common men better,” said DG STPI Dr. Omkar Rai.
While agreeing with opinion that technologies would play a role of powerful catalyst in making India a strong economy, Dr Ajay Data, CEO, Data Xgen Technologies said the interim budget lacks vision for startups and software sector.
“Interim Budget 2019 has very little to offer in terms of incentives to boost innovations. There was no mention of higher allocation of fund for tech start-ups or any kind of support to the software product companies,” he said adding that the regular budget must support software product companies and offer incentives to boost innovation.
“To give a new momentum to Digital India campaign, there is a need to bring in a holistic policy for data hosting and its accountability. There is need for an authority or regulatory body that oversees the implementation and action for entire data flow and storage in India,” Dr Data said.