The vision of a truly digital India can be achieved slowly but surely if the right steps are taken to transform technology, processes and mindsets across the country. This may not happen at the pace that was needed for the demonetization move but should be pursued assiduously to take our country to a better place
The biggest beneficiary of the lacklustre implementation seen in the demonetisation movement over the past many weeks has been the WhatsApp humour brigade. We all have our favourites and mine must be the joke that said, “When India was asked to follow the ‘Cash Mukt Abhiyaan’, the only ones that took the directive seriously were the ATMs.” The long lines at banks and ATMS and the patience with which the nation saw the campaign through even in its roughest weeks is probably a testimony more to the faith that millions of our countrymen have in the Prime Minister and his intentions and certainly to our ability to make such dramatic campaigns work without considerable pain!
“In this matter, there is much to be learned from the experiences of large business corporations, who have embarked in a similar fashion on the digital journey”
While the critics may carp at the demonetisation move and the cynics will jump to point out the somewhat abrupt shift in narrative from black money reduction to cash free digital money exchange to a future tax rationalisation outcome, there can be no doubt that the vision of a truly digital India can be achieved slowly but surely if the right steps are taken to transform technology, processes and mindsets across the country. This may not happen at the pace that was needed for the demonetisation move but should be pursued assiduously to take our country to a better place.
In this matter, there is much to be learned from the experiences of large business corporations, who have embarked in a similar fashion on a digital journey and are in various stages of making the transformation a reality. If one were to look at a global ‘best in class’ case, there is none better than China’s Ping An Financial Services company which aspires to be the global market leader by 2020. Ping An is on a path to becoming the first truly customer centric integrated digital financial services company in the world. The company’s vision for 2018 is to address over four million leads and prospects, create a loyal customer base of over twenty-five million and have a fourfold jump in transactions and revenues with 80 per cent of transactions being digital.
Ping An, or Citibank or visionary Indian corporations like HDFC and Bajaj Finserv pride themselves on their ability to effect large scale transformation by focusing on a well-planned and superbly orchestrated digital adoption movement which will necessarily be played out over two or three years in a thoughtful and systematic manner. This will call for investments in deep understanding of every customer segment, the ability to predict and plan customer journeys, provide ease of access and become the lowest cost and highest customer satisfaction digital corporation in their segment. Attention is paid to culture, talent management, business processes and technology with leadership completely involved at every stage of the transformation.
How does one transplant this approach to a national canvas and enable significant steps for realisation of a financially inclusive and digitally savvy country in 2017? Institutions like Niti Aayog, Ministries of IT and Telecom and partners like NASSCOM and Internet and Mobile and e-Commerce and m-Commerce groups have worked hard in designing scalable models to provide the reach and ease of use. The Common Services Centres (CSCs) of the Ministry of IT are running well in over 1,00,000 locations and in city slums, NASSCOM Foundation has already partnered the National Digital Literacy Mission to deploy over a hundred Digital Literacy Centres (DLCs) and multiple municipal schools, corporation buses and volunteers in many IT cities. A massive volunteering movement will help taking citizens towards being digital through a simple step by step understanding of digital access, e-Banking through Aadhar and Jan Dhan accounts and e-Payments through options like Oxigen, PayTM and Mobikwik. Pressing hundreds of call centres and telecom companies into the mission and conducting collaborative public awareness programs will also show every Indian citizen the road to a truly digital future!
For many of us-individuals, companies and even the chambers of commerce-the fear, doubt and uncertainty at the end of the last year can open up doors of collaborative opportunity in the New Year. In Pune, where the role model partnership between the Municipal Corporation and Pune City Connect has seen municipal school transformation, DLCs and the world class skills lighthouses make an impact across many wards of the city. We have already started a “Digitise India” movement through our centres and individual volunteers and expect to impact over five lakh citizens by enabling them to participate in the financial and digital literacy adoption processes. Our belief has always been that it is easy to sit on the sidelines and criticise, but a few hours every week invested by people can make a difference to many fellow citizens. When the history of Indian is written and the digital success is spoken about, will you join us in saying, “I made it happen?”
By Dr. Ganesh Natarajan
