Prime Minister Narendra Modi is banking heavily on the ‘Digital India’ initiative that aims to make optimum use of technology to improve governance. The BJP-led government also intends to boost digital literacy in the country by providing broadband connectivity to remote areas at affordable rates. It wants citizens to have easy access to government services on their mobile platforms. As part of the second season of the Forbes India CEO Dialogues: The Leadership Agenda, Himanshu Kapania, managing director of Idea Cellular, Sunil Mathur, MD and CEO of Siemens India, Bazmi Husain, MD of ABB India, CP Gurnani, MD and CEO of Tech Mahindra, and R Chandrasekaran, executive vice chairman of Cognizant India, discuss the challenges in implementing this ambitious plan. They believe Digital India can be a reality only if basic infrastructure is in place and regulatory issues are swiftly addressed. Sunil Mathur: As part of the ‘Make in India’ campaign, the prime minister talks of inclusive growth and improving the share of manufacturing from 16 percent to 25 percent of the GDP. This would mean about Rs 500 billion to a trillion of expenditure in the manufacturing sector. If this has to happen, India will have to become the world’s manufacturing hub at some point. It can only happen with digitisation, but we will have to provide high quality, precision equipment. The ‘power for all’ vision cannot happen without digitisation. It is the underlying foundation even for the smart cities programmes.

Chandrasekaran: I feel four ‘Ps’ are very critical for the digital programme to be successful. The first is the [technology] platform; the second, business processes—government to citizens, consumer to consumer and business to consumer dealings must undergo a change. The third layer is people; one needs to expand digital literacy across India. The government will have to think about how to make millions of Indians digitally literate. Skilling will be critical. If all this has to be put in place, the government cannot do it alone. There has to be a private-public partnership. We are all excited about the opportunities it can open up for services companies. The start-up ecosystems are also waiting.

Husain: The impression should not be that there is something against digitisation. We should not just jump on the train and be left behind. We have to understand that first the country needs basics to be put in place, which includes physical infrastructure and regulatory issues. We have to understand that digitisation becomes an enabler of a better quality of life not a giver. The problem is that this country has no privacy policy. The government can do what it wants relating to data and there is nobody to stop it. We should be concerned that all this information will be available to be hacked into by anyone. These were a few excerpts from the entire article on ‘Digital India’ You can read the full article on: http://bit.ly/1fMTQ1H