Transcript for:
India's Growth through Digital Public Goods

hello and welcome to this panel discussion hosted by the print uh we are going to be talking about this really really fascinating topic which is catalyzing India's growth through digital public goods now public goods uh this is it's it's a boom area in India right now the government is doing a lot in it and as is the private sector and non-profits the area is of great importance to everybody and so this panel discussion is timely and the panelists we have are absolutely Stellar people working in this space and they can lend us a lot of perspective uh about this and how India can well first of all what has happened so far and how India can move forward so with that uh let me get on with it I'll first start with a little bit of an introduction on the topic and setting the context for India and then I'll get on to the introductions of our panelists and we'll go on to questions after that so thank you so much for joining us and I hope you enjoy this panel discussion so India leads the world in being one of the largest digital ecosystems and as one of the Pioneers India also has the richest and the most diverse data sets in the world which provides the foundation and presents the opportunity to build a very robust digital public infrastructure not only for us here in India but also for the world so a strong Foundation of Technology infrastructure the large-scale creation of digital public goods which are dpgs as they called in the form of Open Source software open data sets Open Standards and open content that's freely available for use and can be shared and adapted to meet the you know various needs of different communities it's put India on the like a very fast path towards becoming a truly digital Nation now these assets have been key in promoting economic growth Social Development and innovation in this digital age that we are in and I must say also that it's been absolutely key in helping the government reach out to the people that needed Aid during the pandemic I think that use case cannot be understated enough because a lot of people needed were in a very dire position during the pandemic and the government would reach them because it had the digital capabilities to do [Music] and you know the mobile application the jam Trinity has at work so success stories in India's technology technology ecosystem which includes the India stack it's you know India stack is a it's an open set of apis that the government of India developed to enable digital applications and services for welfare access and Service delivery uh this includes things like aadhaar and it's been used for financial inclusion identity verification and paperless transactions something that the government is very keen on promoting now as of March 2021 1.8 billion bank account bank accounts have been linked to aadhar that's brilliant with a b and uh it's I mean this is it's a it's a huge huge number and uh over 15 lakh crore has been transferred through the DBT system to beneficiaries which leads to significant savings for the government itself in terms of you know the cost of uh transactions and also of course uh helps a lot of people get the necessary support that's needed another example of uh digital public infrastructure that the government has created again this is pandemic link uh is the coven app and the digital platform which was developed for managing and tracking the country's probate 19 vaccination program and this led to so far 1.6 billion doses of covid-19 vaccines being administered through the platform again this is a b billion uh these are very very massive numbers so in today's panel discussion we will be you know diving deep into how technology has and can further lead to India's development journey and now we get to our illustrious panel and I'll start with the introductions I'll start with Mr pramod bhasin now Mr Basin is one of India's pioneering businessmen and entrepreneurs he's widely known for his Stellar contribution to the growth and development of the Indian I.T industry he is the founder and is the former CEO of genpact a really really key uh organization in India's digital transformation story and he currently serves as the chairman of the Indian Council for research on International economic relations or a career where he has been absolutely instrumental in driving the organization's research and policy agenda particularly in areas such as international trade and digital economy next we have uh Mr Shankar Maru Ada who is the CEO and co-founder of eight step and uh he's absolutely passionate about addressing social problems at scale and he's shown this through his work at eight step and uh you know trying to address social problems through technology-based tools he's an entrepreneur and marketing professional with a wide range of experience working on large-scale projects such as the aadhar aadha system where he was the head of demand generation and marketing he also pioneered data analytics in India through marketex a company that he co-founded and in he's an investor in startups and a mentor to entrepreneurs which you know right now is such a key and in demand skill that people need you know we India we talk about the startup boom that's happening in India the unicorns that are coming up but very little is talked about the need for experienced and knowledgeable people to lead this you know discussion and to help these come companies grow and be sustainable then we of course last but not the least at all is uh Miss sudha srinivasan who leads the center for social Innovation at the Naj Institute which is a development action organization focused on resilient livelihoods for all it's a it's a key topic that all of us should be actively engaging with and so sudha actually she works with governments markets and Civil Society to bring this about to create awareness and to drive this Mission forward a key initiative from her Center is the Indian administrative Fellowship which brings senior Executives from the corporate sector to serve alongside principal secretaries of State departments to promote livelihood opportunities across various various sectors now this again this Confluence of the private sector and the public sector is something that India desperately needs and the work that sudha is doing is instrumental in this so thank you all so much for joining us for this panel discussion uh I will start with a question I will pose it to all of you uh I'll start with Mr Basin and so what is the role of technology in the context of the of India's development how has the digital public goods landscape evolved over the last decade or so in India and how can it be leveraged to promote you know inclusion based Social Development and an extension of this question would be what do you think has driven the digital revolution in India so far thank you very much it's a joy to be here and um especially with my fellow panelists and my very distinguished fellow Panasonic wonderful to be here um it's a big big big huge question um we are the most digitally a Savvy country in some ways but the fact has remained in the past that our digital penetration while we could say there were 800 million smartphones and so on so forth is actually in use of digital um Goods was very low um and I think yeah I don't know if you've seen this recent ad which came out in the newspapers as to how many users account for how much proportion of total UPI payments Etc yes which which is very eye-opening and I think we've got to keep that in mind but what I think is happening in India to me is the most exciting thing that I have seen in my business career and I'm serious about that I'm not making that up for the sake of it but I'm really serious because what the leap frogging that we are doing with digital public goods as part of a vision of building the virtual Highway in India as opposed to the physical High base is incredibly compelling you know I have just come back from the U.S um two days ago and of course the U.S is an amazing economy is so resilient uh bouncing back so fast already at this point in time but the fact is you know we still have our vaccination cards on a little piece of paper signed in by the pharmacist um the banks and the banking system and the way it works is still archaic there are so many things the Health Care System doesn't work with each other at all I think India can take a leapfrog here and frankly be the model for many developing countries to LeapFrog pass their own handicaps of physical infrastructure and I hope and see that the way this will be developed particularly the government developing it in partnership with people like Nandan who Shankar and others of course would know very well and of course so that you know but I spare it in so many others is we will never produce enough doctors and nurses to reach all the people we need to in India across all the villages so the ability to use a digital infrastructure to be able to provide that kind of support to tier five tier six towns small villages everywhere places which you can't reach by four by by by car Etc where a doctor will never go is phenomenal think about education and the Revolutionary impact this could have and I'm really hoping it does because honestly no country in the world has progressed much without revolutionizing their education system no country we haven't done it yet and I think this is the Chance by which we can do it otherwise it would have been very painful and very slow so I think the role we are playing here is very far-reaching and Visionary um because it's a unique effort I do talk to people in Europe in the U.S about it and most of them look at me wonderingly and saying why would a government do that why wouldn't you know Google or Facebook or somebody else do it and my point to them is you know you build roads for your people you build schools for your people we build virtual infrastructure for our people and that I think is defining for India today and I think this could be one of the most exciting chapters for India where we unleash you know with ondc entrepreneurship at a scale we haven't seen before uh it's early days it will take time but in core areas education Financial Services Healthcare Commerce smes we now have the chance to transform it and we've done it frugally so what I love about the fact is that I mean imagine the west or a developed country trying to build out the aadhaar program they would have spent about 20 times more money and not worth penetration and reach which thanks to Shankar and others we've been able to get so truly exciting truly path breaking the stuff that people will talk about in future like they talk about China's manufacturing they will talk about India's digital Revolution for the world I hope fantastic and uh Miss Universe I mean your take on this uh do you have anything to add on you know how we can go ahead and leverage uh you know or new new technologies or older Technologies repackaged and realigned towards the country's development yeah absolutely you know I think no one could have said it better than pramod once the infrastructure comes into place the cars will come too right so what we're seeing alongside the development of digital public infrastructure which is such a distinguishing feature of India's digital economy right unlike most countries that saw their digital economies flourish because of the boom of private corporations large Tech India's economy is powered by digital Goods that are public in nature right um and in this process what it has created is a very fertile ground for a lot of Last Mile Innovations solving hyper local problems it's the journey I have been very very fortunate to witness from very close quarters uh with the support of people like Shankar uh who are mentors to these entrepreneurs right it's the new genre of non-profit Tech entrepreneurs who are solving for Education Health farmer advisory in a fueling The Artisan economy creating better linkages uh to Capital to markets for small producers across the country creating vernacular AI con you know vernacular content in both textual and voice formats for vernacular AI which really is on the Poise of taking off uh bringing this power of digital public assets to uh the very last mile who could have imagined uh poultry and rotary in places like lohardaga and barabanki be powered through Ai and that is happening in the same generation as you know AI solving first world problems so amazing fertile grounds for entrepreneurs to solve problems the other aspect is how wonderfully governments at State levels in the central Ministries have opened doors for this kind of public private participation right so in the same generation we have senior technocrats cios ctOS who have LED large-scale digital transformations in the private sector now collaborating with civil servants and accelerating the pace at which this private sector Innovation Finds Its Pathways into public systems right which is what we are seeing through the Indian administrative Fellowship uh very very interesting and exciting times indeed right and uh Mr marwara there's actually something that Mr Universal said that resounded with me that is there really this rise of a group of entrepreneurs or a class of entrepreneurs who are in this not for the profit but actually for the work itself that would truly be revolutionary yes and that to me is one of the most exciting things right and if you trace the journey and if you go back to the question on uh the role of Technology uh the evolution of India's DPG right the context of these new tech entrepreneurs has to be seen in light of the developments of the last decade Plus so in a way over the last three decades it's now shown how mobile phones allowed us to LeapFrog an entire generation of communication right right replace mobile phones with technology in general replace communication with development in general right technology is allowing India to LeapFrog several generations of development and go straight into a digital Society I understand in 2009 all of this was science fiction when we started working on aadhaar or then known as uidi yes but important thing there is in a digital Society collaboration happens through exchange of information the reason you're able to press a few buttons on swiggy and still get a physical Pizza is because complex information has been exchanged between multiple stakeholders right which means the small entrepreneur who has a mobike now has a choice of or whatever right right the point here is this evolution took more than a decade for India starting with aadhar where the proposition was simple but very counter-intuitive for most policy makers one a lot of government services and private services start the first step is who are you you're right once that is answered let set of other things ultimately if that results in a delivery of a service so our proposition was we will do one thing and one thing only answer the question of are you who you say you are right right now with anything it was a one-year battle to convince people what happened with this was once we had that base of aadhar on that you could create a next layer of payments foundational identity payments whether it is other enabled payment systems or UPI and all that once you had these two you could then think of digital documents e-sign Digi Locker right when you put these three things together it is no different from the Silicon Valley era of government of U.S creating internet first HTTP protocols and packet switching Clinton office talking about GPS right and then you had a whole explosion of things on top the reason I'm saying all of this is the rise of the tech entrepreneur is because a lot of these digital infrastructure has been laid in the country right which allows people to think of how they can use technology without needing to have very Deep Pockets which allows them to think of as sudha said last might Last Mile solutioning right and seeing the success of some of these infrastructure and their winning implementations uh we know the numbers author 1.35 billion UPI 8 billion transactions a month 360 billion uh dollars of direct benefit transfer 27 billion dollars of saving to the country because of aadha which cost only 1.5 billion so all of this have now seeped in right on the ground what we are seeing is people asking so how do I use it they are digital natives the Young Generation right so they're saying I have a role right I have all this infrastructure what can I do with it that to me unleashes a massive entrepreneurial spirit and I'm using entrepreneurial in the true Spirit of the word not for profit or you know for independent of for-profit or not for profit I understand and I think that is going to unleash such a powerful force right we will literally see history being made in the next two decades fantastic that's actually very inspirational and uh so now coming to you again Mr Bassin we've now mentioned several digital public goods like aadhar and digilocker that have been set up but in your view what are some of the other successful digital public goods initiatives that have actually worked and that have impacted uh Society at Large yes I think we've um I I love the conversation here because I I agree totally it's revolutionary and in India this will be the most exciting part when we think back on history I may not be around but you know the I think the world still doesn't adequately recognize the revolution that aadhar was right because the real to me the real Secret Sauce that I thought well how they were able to create Shankar and London would create a pull for it from the public right so that the public needed it the public came out because otherwise trying to push it out to one and 1.2 billion people would never happen right you you it's like uh fighting gun laws in America it ain't gonna happen right at this point in time whereas I think what adhar was able to do through that pull factor is get to the people and now everybody can say you know um who are you and you can answer that question there is a very good quote which I've forgive me forgive my levity in Delhi a lot of people said and now one of the guys can say [Laughter] you know finally you answered that question but I think going beyond that I'll give you a tiny example if I may own Healthcare with the public goods that we're setting up in the infrastructure we're setting up for healthcare to be able to exchange information to carry information to carry electronic medical records to be able to access them from any point that you want for the government to access them anonymized to be able to forecast and use the analytics behind it to forecast disease spread where do you need the medicine the shortages etc etc it builds a nationwide information system that doesn't exist anywhere else in the world right and right so nobody else in the world has any even the NHS has nothing like this it has Legacy systems which don't talk to each other where if you want information it's very hard to collect it but now tiny example if I may um most patients stay in hospital after surgery because they need to be monitored that's the only reason there's no other reason why they're there so they stay on two or three days four days because some some doctor well now if you can put all that information onto that infrastructure you will get a hundred different companies providing that service so that you can go home and be monitored at home by one of these companies it relieves pressure on the hospital it'll release pressure on the nurses and the doctors and it allows and 100 other people to become entrepreneurs personally I think it is important that these entrepreneurs make money that they are profitable because that's the only thing that will sustain them um but it allows a thousand new ideas to come to the fore so I think in those core areas we can we will begin to see very soon in the next three to five years a a fantastic uh availability access to information for patients which can transform the quality of Health Care that they get similarly with education you know we I run I'm part of Asha impact which is a impact investment fund a small fund that we're setting up we've been working on it for eight years and now when I see some of the companies there which are using this Telecom this technology infrastructure so instance to teach education so we have a company which teaches a hundred thousand um kids every day on government entrance exams right purely virtually purely through digital Goods purely I mean the best sorry I'll step back let's step back and remember that the biggest digital board in the world is the internet right it's free imagine if somebody had started charging for it when they first Mr Lee brenners or forgotten this whole name had started saying uh patented and charging it and imagine how much damage that would have caused the world right this public goods and the concept I think in these areas is very powerful for and this is the last mile Innovation that soda was talking about where which we haven't been able to solve for in decades and now suddenly you can see a way to start solving for it on your mobile phone on your little iPad or whatever else it may be that you have access to so to me these are count I can there's 20 such examples that I wish I was 20 years old again right so uh now Mr Universal uh we've talked about last mile several times now so what do you see as being the current challenges in the effective development and Adoption of digital technology in The Last Mile and how can we go about mitigating these yeah so Innovations at The Last Mile need to happen in the same generation as solutions for the first world right that's the problem statement uh we're taking on uh basically for them to happen in the same generation means that you don't waste 10 years waiting for trickle down to happen when all the stars line up you do it today because there's a sense of urgency to solve these last five problems uh otherwise as we have seen in other parts of the world inequality could very quickly spiral out of control right so that's what you want to start so the solutions are required I think at both ends one is you know continuing to invest in this digital public infrastructure build out uh for instance if you take a non -economically attractive sector not an e-commerce business or a SAS kind of sector but say agriculture or livestock management uh uh or The Artisan economy you need the infrastructure that goes all the way from unique identifiers for the producer uh geo-referenced Village maps real-time crop data right you need all pieces of the stack and there's a lot of work yet to be done in building that out uh you see the central Ministries state government starting to invest in this significantly uh but the state needs capacity like with aadhar in everything else that has been built out it has been created by technologists who are socially conscious had a sense of service probably gave up far more lucrative opportunities and came and built this out for the country we need the people and we need the mechanisms within government to absorb them that's a huge need and then finally at the last mile you need the entrepreneurs for instance those of you who saw the karigar clinic episode on Shark Tank for example there's an example of entrepreneurs who helped Bobby Ben a producer of embroidery who in turn employs a few hundred such women from very very impoverished backgrounds otherwise but very skilled at what they do that's the last mile entrepreneur and if they had access to ondc and other such digital Goods they could put this whole work on steroids and scale Countrywide right so you need problem solvers at the last mile the sector needs to become attractive for technologists uh who do this not just with a sense of Charity and wanting to do good it's not just service but it is problem solving at the last mile so can both sides need to step up and we need to make it possible make it easy create a nurturing environment in which all of this can happen that's a big part of what we do at the center for social Innovation at the nudge right and uh so now Mr maruvada actually building on exactly that point how can the government encourage the private sector and Civil Society to actually come forward and work in these areas what are the kind of nudges that they can put in place that can enhance this kind of collaboration yeah I think that's a great question and again building of what promotes it and sudha said and I'll explain with two examples two so that it becomes contextual the design was thought of as promo said as to how do you create pool how do you create demand how do you leverage the existing large ecosystem of enrollment agencies State Central State thing and within government there are so central government there are so many departments so by choosing to do something very minimal it created demand from other departments other departments said that hey if you can say somebody is who they are I will then use it to say are they eligible for a direct benefit are they eligible for some uh scholarship Etc now States said that look if you are creating that I will be in charge of enrolling my people and the enrollment design was such that it is the private for-profit enrolling agencies who anyway do this they were contracted but the incentives were aligned for everyone that it was only outcome based payment and not input based payment so you had a whole bunch of enrolling agencies coming in then as part of enrollment there were ngos who were focused on say the different label making sure that they were brought to the enrollment agency so that they get a number and then once the enrollment was done agencies like reliance jio and others said that hey I can use this authentication for my own purposes so Reliance jio went from zero to 100 million subscribers in six months but because the E kyc part was now pretty much uh instant and free of cost right zero the allowed many investors to directly participate because tkyc was there second example and I think you know promote on education there is an aadhaar of Education already and x-step Foundation where by the way yes rohini so we have we partnered with the government of India where we created a digital public good called sunburn think of it sorry this is egg step that is the foundation as extra Foundation we partnered with the government of India to create a open source technology called Sunbird which is a digital public good we then help the government to create a platform using Sunbird called deeksha so Sunbird is a digital public good when you instantiate it and provide a service diksha is that and deeksha is a digital public infrastructure right because deeksha is providing a service deeksha is also an infrastructure where the state government can use it to provide digital content to train their teachers with verifiable credentials to assess children to enable teachers to conduct micro improvements and each of these are like a series of building blocks right this allows solutions to be created on the state what does that mean in the last six years as a country we have had 61 billion that's be as in Bharat minutes of learning 300 000 plus pieces of digital content in 32 languages available free of cost to anybody to use 140 million verifiable credentials which is around 8 million teachers trained by the respective State departments States and who are working with ngos so how can government work the model which we are abstracting from more than a decade of such kind of experiences is this one government creates the policy because they are the largest NGO in the world in the country right the government of India is the largest NGO in the country they are Keen to solve problems for 1.3 billion people or 1.4 inclusion is what they have to do so they create the policy they create the rules for the playground right digital infrastructure can be created either philanthropically placed let's say like x-step Foundation or by private players who volunteer say I Spirit or like us from the private sector who were part of government or by government itself there are many examples of that so there is a digital public infrastructure the key is unlike a lot of the normal NGO world where we do something if it works we scale it up when you're designing for population scale digital public infrastructure from the get-go you have to think about a lot of things previously data administrative boundaries legal uh respecting the laws of the land right unintended consequences because you cannot build a road every 100 meters every one year because because you have to think through the whole thing right from the beginning so three parts to this therefore I've talked about policy which has to think forward when I should think of digital infrastructure and the third and most important one has to think about how Innovation can happen on top of these digital roles by governments digital benefit transfer and you know we started in covet there's an inclusion Focus there four billion dollars transferred instantly to 160 million people like that absolutely no checks no worry whose signature will be on the checks like in the US right 200 million women into whose bank account straight money was sent not to the men to the women policy right inclusion government Focus profit the bazaar focus and they will do what they do and uh any people who are missed out by both marginalized right or innovation at the for the not profit profit sector that's where the samaj comes in right so policy infrastructure Innovation these are in continuing Cycles so that is how I believe government can work with the private sector and civil sector to promote both the creation and the use of Technology I understand and uh now we've talked about the role of government quite a bit so Mr bhasin I have this question for you should digital public infrastructure should the driving force be a kind of top-down approach where the central government is driving it or should it be the state governments taking the lead because each state has its own unique use cases and requirements I hope the government will sincerely think about doing this in a manner that is seamless and really preserves the essence of a seamless transaction in the public infrared Goods being allowing you to do work frictionless which is such an important part of new new um entrepreneurs and new businesses right two in terms of Center versus State I really believe this entire ecosystem needs to be driven by its own demand so it's got to be responsive to the market and the market must lead it because that's how you'll really get Market acceptance and you'll get Market players coming in you'll get entrepreneurs innovating and that's how Innovation typically happens you know most Innovation does happen the center plays a very critical role to preserve the Integrity of the digital infrastructure and to deal with all the issues that Shankar talked about privacy security data data issue breaches contractual issues you know how to make sure it remains free how to make sure it remains sustainable at the state level also I think there will be many ways they can use it but I think the basic infrastructure will remain the same every state should use it for all the things that it has State control over Education Health Care so many others distribution of manrega money distribution of skills development money Etc it can use that one area which is missing which we haven't talked about there are two areas missing which we haven't talked about one area which is very important is actually the fact that we haven't put employment onto these platforms now there are good reasons for that but imagine if we could create something which allowed States and everybody else to create an employment exchange at scale uh for a variety of different skills etc etc that would be fantastic and two I hope someday we can really work extensively with the government and the center and state to digitize them they really end up holding up a huge part of our development in our country and I hope we can really help them digitize their own processes their own people the time it takes to get a file through the time it takes to get approved the time it takes to get paid by the way you know try getting money out of a government Department nobody talks about this stuff but the fact is that is a non-starter most of the time and for an average entrepreneur and I think if we can solve for some of those things it'll be great but I think sorry about this payment the states can play a huge role particularly in the domains that they have under their control health is a big issue for them right can you use that and how effectively different states will use but most of all I think it has to be Market driven market demand driven and it has to show people that hey you can be somewhat profitable if you do this um and you can't build a real business using these Goods with greater transparency than we've ever had before in the building of businesses you know and that to me brings in much more organized sector Business Development imagine training likely trained teachers that take step imagine training Healthcare professionals on these platforms across the board we need a million of them imagine having them trained and available to provide their services you know they can be rated they can be trained they can be hired they can offer their services they can do a thousand things under any of these domains absolutely and uh so now unfortunately even though this has been a very fascinating discussion we are running out of time so I'm going to get to the closing comments for each of you on you know the scope and the future of technology and how this collaboration between samaj sarkar and Bazaar uh can lead to the development of the country the inclusion the financial inclusion that's needed and the service delivery that is so sorely needed in the country so I will start with uh Mr maruvada uh your closing comments please yeah what I've come to realize is technology changes behavior um because technology offers certain capabilities that we could not with a mobile phone internet GPS right so these capabilities are used by people to provide Solutions when I use those Solutions my behavior changes I can order the pizza in a minute why do I have to struggle so much to pay my taxes okay let's digitize that right right so the behavior of the citizen their aspirations their mindset changes why am I still so sudha's point about that is so third world right so technology creates capabilities ability to provide the ability to pay ability to verify credentials people build Solutions on top of this infrastructure when that is successful and demand is there it is adopted usage changes Behavior Behavior changes needs that creates new innovation new capabilities so this cycle right is moving very very fast first point second think of each of these capabilities as letters and the dpis as vowels now if you remember Scrabble the more letters you have the more vowels you have the more words you can create so India is developing a magnificent array of vowels and alphabets which is digital capabilities we are the global leaders in using DPI as a country right may not be physical infrastructure but digital infrastructure for sure right and as part of some G20 conversations yesterday was a delegation from Singapore who heard all of this and said wow this is India's basket best kept secret though they were not aware of all of this they haven't read it right and as pramod said those who have heard of it they can't grasp their mind around it whether they're in U.S or Europe how is this possible what do you mean a government is doing something that you associate the big Tech to do yeah right it's only when they come to India they see the coconut Cellar casually accepting digital money as if you know not even bothering to check it right and a coconut is uh purchased without any device except a QR code when they see in the airports people casually walking through because of Digi yatra casually showing their driving license on their phone Digi Locker right that strikes oh this is real yeah obviously we can do a better job of marketing and you know that's all there but the point is we are seeing history being created in front of our eyes so that's fine first of all Technologies like AI right we are imagining how we can use that for our problems of inclusion and therefore demonstrating to the world that it is possible to solve the conundrum of innovation and inclusion for a country as large and diverse as India by leveraging technology and not being afraid of it as the big bad wolf in some countries but going completely Gango that leave technology in the hands of the private players and they will sort it out government should completely get out of the way right uh so we have a unique opportunity imagine if Silicon Valley was a country and if instead of private Innovation we're talking of a country level Innovation that's the opportunity in front of us in the next two decades foreign has been so exciting drawing from uh promotes comments on you know let markets take the wheel and drive it Shankar's comment that government is indeed the largest funder of welfare uh it is is coming out so strongly that the unifying force for both these players is in how we contribute to creating digital public infrastructure and how we leverage it and draw from it as government as markets to maximize gains and then comes the very interesting role therefore that Civil Society plays there are segments of the population that markets still have not been able to reach right sometimes even governments are not able to reach and there comes Civil Society to be that glue to kind of do the work that is required to be done where there is no money to be made right that's the whole thesis of inclusive development and all of it is running on uh well not all but a very very large part of it is running because of the existence of this massive digital infrastructure that all three players have put together so I'm personally excited by the sheer number of opportunities that have come into play for a socially conscious technology savvy person that wants to contribute to India's development right if you're entrepreneurial and wanted to start up here's this wonderful space if you want to work inside government with government there's a space all you need to do is you know throw your hat in the ring do it with strong intent and I think there's almost a guarantee that this work will be far more fulfilling uh far more good use of the strengths and muscles that you've built as a technologist then most opportunities that you know a single narrow path in any sector would offer uh exciting times we live in and glad to be part of this conversation absolutely thank you so much I just wanted to add a phrase which is a very pity way and I did not talk about before the best role of samaj is it steps in where markets won't and governments can't yes so the more we can increase what governments can private sector participation Indian Administration Fellowship the more we can increase What markets will ability to give low outlay services to reach the poor right the role of samaj then becomes to help the other two in addition to filling the gaps where none of them can or will so in India we are seeing a very healthy potential for these three pillars to work together absolutely very well said thank you so much here and Mr Basin uh your closing remarks sure um and again thank you for this panel it's wonderful really love being here I think the world I hope will recognize the contribution India can make to the development of many other countries in this manner because it's unprecedented and it's a brand new idea you know why you why would governments only focus on building the physical infrastructure why not help build their virtual infrastructure and I think that will unleash a million entrepreneurs across this country over the next five to ten years I do think there is hurdles that we should be very conscious of one is awareness we need to increase awareness and real internet penetration in our country right now we talk a lot about big numbers but the fact is that it many people can't use it it's inadequate the connectivity is an inadequate etc etc let's not gloss over these issues okay I think it's very important that we solve for that because otherwise what will happen I I don't what I don't want happening is that the people at the bottom of the pyramid or people in smaller towns or people without connected tend to start losing out because they don't have the same leverage now that will happen in the market economy anyway but I hope we can significantly enhance the awareness of what these digital public goods can do for people across the board and how they can use them and if my one one suggestion to everyone who's been working on this would be please if there's a way to show people or increase awareness I think that would be very valuable and two government needs to get reformed the same way our government systems are our cake and I hope that these digital infrastructures will also allow us to make a difference to the workings of our government which then can truly make that triumvirite come together uh in a way that is highly productive for all of us right and absolutely wonderfully said and so you know the the kind of analogy that comes to my mind is uh you know a jumbo jet and an aircraft which you know it's done taxiing and it's it's now approaching the proper Runway and just before it starts the proper takeoff the the pilot kind of you know makes the engines go to full power and the plane starts vibrating with potential energy you know it's so that I feel is where digital public infrastructure in India is right now and we just need to ensure that we get everybody on the plane that's right we can't we can't leave anybody off the plane the government I guess needs to kind of remove blocks in front of this plane and any time now you're just going to push forth the pedal and the planes just going to shoot ahead and take off uh this it's actually been a wonderful wonderful discussion and uh for all of our viewers here right also like to urge you once again to look at the Indian administrative Fellowship uh which is a program by the nudge Institute uh you can go to their website and check it out it's very very very useful important and impactful please do go and check it out and thank you so much all of you for joining us uh the people watching and also of course are panelists thank you thank you very much really appreciate thank you really enjoy the conversation