Trickle down technology

While the farmers’ agitation in New Delhi has caught the headlines of the global press, that is just the political angle. One thing that is not political and pervasive is technology. Tech has the power to transform the life of each and every citizen—from the top of the pyramid to the very bottom.

The Liberalization of 1991 transformed industry, the stock market and many areas like telecom. The Y2K transformed IT services and the 2000s also saw the rise of Big Pharma in India. Post-2014 we have seen many advances in power augmentation and electrification, LPG connections, road making and the like.

But despite India being a predominantly farming community, little progress has been made in the field of agriculture. Among all the countries of the world, AgriTech has the biggest unrealized potential in India. It could be argued that little happened after the Green Revolution of the 1960s. The 2020s should now be the decade of a tech powered Green Revolution.

It’s time to focus on the farmer, the small trader and the owner of the small enterprise or manufacturing unit. The mobile and the IoT device has already put technology in the hands of everyone. Everyone has access to the cloud no matter what device they own. There was a time when you needed the most expensive of IT equipment to go truly digital. Now the playing field has been leveled thanks to the human race wielding billions of devices connected to millions of data centers. Democratization of technology is the new mantra.

The Covid year is behind us and we have entered the post-Covid era. Technological acceleration or techceleration has already taken place. It’s not that Covid has brought us to a Brave New World which we didn’t think was coming. Rather we knew it was coming and Covid merely accelerated that.

The West is in decline. China has seen a slowing of domestic demand, an ageing population and a world suspicious of its intentions thanks to the Covid crisis. It is India’s decade if it so chooses. But for that to happen, technology will play a huge role. That technology will have to percolate right down to the
masses and not stay in elite hands.

The government. The industry. The citizens. App developers. Product developers. R&D professionals. Startup founders. Everyone will have to step up for us to achieve our $5 trillion dollar economy goal on our way to becoming a fully developed country maybe by the end of this decade itself.

Let’s begin by fully empowering our farmers with the use of technology so that they can streamline their efforts and maximize their output to get integrated fully into this Brave New World.