PM Modi is required to shoulder the responsibility of a technological renaissance, says ANANYA BORGOHAIN
Our Prime Minister’s reputation precedes him. Currently the second most followed political leader in the world after Barack Obama, as Narendra Modi visits the US for a second time as the Indian PM, it is important to realise that this visit is more consequential than his last.
Denied a US visa to address a rally in Madison Square Garden in 2005 by the George Bush administration, under the provisions of a religious law which the US had hitherto never used on anyone else, Modi’s US visit in September 2014 as the leader of the largest democracy of the world bore more symbolic signification than political concerns. It spread out a strong message that the dissenter has arrived and nobody, ardent worshippers and fierce critics alike, can ignore him any longer. After a royal welcome at the White House, Obama received the same in India in his historic visit in January this year. But now setting aside all fanfare and extravagant indulgences, Modi’s second US visit is a real test of his competence.
Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google, said in a YouTube video welcoming Modi that Google strives to make its product low bandwidth and offline, that it envisages low cost Chromebooks for schoolchildren in India, refurbish the digital infrastructure to make smartphones and Android One more affordable, and also make the Indic languages more accessible online.
Modi will visit their headquarters for a Townhall Q&A tomorrow. Earlier this year, he had discussed web development in India with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg during his visit to the country. In fact, Facebook has already announced developments in its Internet.org programme that seeks to provide free health, education, and economic information. The PM is also set to meet Apple’s Tim Cook and Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, besides attending 20 events in two days.
If Modi’s 2014 visit was an endeavour to initiate a geopolitical discourse on defence, counter-terrorism, ‘look East, link West’, and so on, his current visit is an enhanced mapping of India in the global landscape.
India is one of the most viable options for digital players to explore, with its consistently growing market options, more so when Facebook and Google are banned in China. Now it is in the PM’s hand to see that he grasps the wonders of technology and walks the talk of making India ‘smart’, with a global digital expansion that benefits even the most interior spaces of the nation.
Reportedly, India requires a GDP growth of 9 per cent every year for stability in its employment ratio, whereas its current growth rate is 7 per cent. It is firmly believed that building more research centres and labs for the global digital giants in India could retrieve the stumbling blocks. With a more pronounced public-private partnership and investment of international companies, the problem of unemployment and infrastructural decadence could be controlled.
Modi has been compared — and contrasted — with Nehru, but with 300 million internet subscribers in India, he has a much bigger challenge. He is required to shoulder the responsibility of a technological renaissance. It is all the more intriguing as he has also faced public wrath for attempts at internet censorships and controlling. As he dined with the Fortune 500 CEOs on his first day of the trip, what remains to be seen is how much of digital goodwill is digested at the same time.