by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions
By Amit Kapoor,
The last four years of the Narendra Modi government have seen trajectory-altering policies and programmes covering a broad spectrum of areas, from Sagarmala targeting the waterways and coastline for enhancing port development and pushing the growth of coastal areas; to Digital India enabling online infrastructure and internet connectivity.
India is currently also undergoing a powerful wave of social and behavioural change movements, with Swachh Bharat Mission ensuring 601 open defecation free districts in 2019. This movement towards a clean India is being complemented by the ‘Eat Right India Movement’ launched by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, with its key focus on public health and safe food.
India stands at a very crucial juncture wherein it is under the rising burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), with the prevalence of diabetes increased to 65 million in 2016, as per a Lancet Study.
Not only is India experiencing severe concerns of NCDs, arising out of poor diets and bad food habits, but the nation remains critical in terms of incidences of food-borne diseases, under-nutrition and micro-nutrition. In 2017, one of the major contributors to concerns of morbidity due to communicable diseases was acute diarrhoeal diseases (22 per cent).
As is visible, India’s status of health due to food-related concerns is alarming and that is why the Eat Right India movement comes as a refreshing change. The movement started off with a nation-wide campaign to reduce the intake of high salt, fat and sugar by creating a catchy ‘Aaj se Thoda kam’ tagline and to ensure food safety.
However, it is important to be wary of the fact that the problem of poor diets, bad eating habits and unsafe food remains a deeply entrenched problem across the nation, wherein a simple policy or programme would not meet the magnitude of the concern. A nation as diverse and expansive as India also continues to battle barriers of percolation of awareness to the bottom and lacks streamlined messages to alter the basic food habits. The regulations can ensure the supply of safe food, but how will the consumer demand safe food or choose food habits that are aligned with rising concerns of public health in the nation? By being aware.
This movement has attempted to resolve the demand side of food safety and public health by carrying out a nation-wide “Swasth Bharat Yatra”, the world’s biggest cyclothon for nudging the majority of the population to eat right. India, being a diverse nation with a population of 122.64 crore, there is a pertinent challenge for any movement to create a sustainable social impact.
This Yatra has had its fair share of success by covering about 20,000 km and ensuring an outreach of 2.5 crore people. The movement has had a meticulous approach in creating awareness which has involved stakeholder engagements, from poster competitions for children to Eat Right Awards for budding food businesses. The Yatra, which had been spread across a period of 100 days and ended on January 29 in New Delhi, has the potential to be scalable and replicable!
However, to throw caution to the winds, it is vital to remember that such behavioural change movements do not come with a guarantee and it is important to keep the momentum going to create a lasting social impact. So, even though the Swasth Bharat Yatra has had the buzz going on for eating safe, right and fortified, there is still a dire need to keep the pace going — to continue carrying out of such activities and events to magnify the awareness and spread the message of eating right across the nation.
A model of social and behavioural movement is not always sustainable; therefore, it is important to take into consideration that for a movement of such magnitude, the government would not be sufficient in itself and will need to enter into collaborations and partnerships.
The social impact that has been created will hold value if and only if such events are made annual, and there is devolution of responsibility to states and district food authorities to continue with the on-ground inclusive and engaging activities. Once the model is strengthened via devolution of responsibility and regularity of events, it can become a benchmark for other matters of public interest that indeed require behavioural change as a key factor for creating social and economic impact.
Such movements also need to be compatible with the nation’s socio-economic challenges, and the differing cultural, regional, social and economic challenges within the nation. Here, it is also important to see that a commercial marketing approach might crumble the potential of the movement, and a ‘social marketing’ approach should be adopted, since it affects not only the individuals but the society as a whole.
Therefore, social and behavioural movements like Swasth Bharat Yatra do have the potential to create a healthier and a more productive India if approached in the right manner!
(Amit Kapoor is chair, Institute for Competitiveness, India. The views expressed are personal. He can be contacted at amit.kapoor@competitiveness.in and tweets @kautiliya. Paramjeet Chawla, senior researcher, Institute for Competitiveness, India has contributed to the article)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | C S R, Corporate, Markets, News, Online Marketing, Technology
By Bhavana Akella,
Bengaluru : Riding on the fourth industrial revolution with disruptive technologies, global computer data storage major Dell EMC is building IT infrastructure for citizen services like Aadhaar in “Digital India”.
“As a leading hardware vendor, we build IT infrastructure also for the government to provide citizen services like Aadhaar, passports, invoices of customs and GST settlements,” Dell EMC India Managing Director Rajesh Janey told IANS here.
Though US-based Dell Technologies has been hard-selling its computers, laptops, tablets and servers in India over the years, it began providing data storage, hybrid Cloud and data protection solutions to enterprises and state-run organisations following its acquisition of EMC in 2016 for a whopping $67-billion (Rs 4.61 lakh crore).
In September 2016, Dell Technologies acquired Massachusetts-based data-storage systems major EMC Corp, founded in 1979 and named after its founders Richard Egan, Roger Marino and John Curly, in one of the largest deals in the technology sector, worldwide.
“Data on the unique identification card (Aadhaar) issued to citizens is run and stored on our server racks managed by third-party vendors,” Janey said in an exclusive interview.
Similarly, passports are archived on the company’s storage while Customs and Excise departments use Dell IT infrastructure to raise invoices for businesses.
The company sells IT infrastructure products and services, including flash-based storage, data protection, security, hyper-converged infrastructure, backup solutions for small and medium businesses.
“The central and state governments also use our digital platforms for the Goods and Services Tax (GST) settlements by traders on the GST Network across the country, Janey asserted.
In the enterprise segment, leading banks and telecos use Dell EMC’s hardware for computing, storage and data security.
“Our products and solutions enable enterprises to undergo digital transformation as part of the fourth industrial revolution, leaving behind legacies such as mainframes, client servers and networked work stations,” Janey said.
The first industrial revolution occurred in the 18th century when agrarian practices and rural life under went industrial change with the roll out of the steam engine; the second from 1870 to 1914 marked mass production in industries and the third, from the 1980s, and subseqeuntly witnessed the emergence of personal computers and internet.
In the fourth revolution, disruptive technologies have been replacing the conventional platforms with artificial intelligence (AI), internet of things (IoT), Cloud, robotics and automation.
Hinting that new technologies would disrupt the functioning of many businesses, Janey said the increasing use of AI would make humans digital conductors, telling machines what they have to do.
“More mundane and routine tasks will get offloaded to machines,” he noted.
According to industry estimates, the number of IoT devices — devices, home appliances and vehicles connected through the internet — will explode to 200 billion over the next decade from 20 billion in 2020.
“Dropping cost of networking is fuelling the growth of IoT devices. At the same time, when we have so many devices with data, we need AI to analyse and convert it into actionable intelligence, thereby removing the routine tasks,” the top executive noted.
The evolution of sectors will happen as these technologies are being introduced into them, said Janey, who was earlier EMC’s President for India and the South Asia region.
“The future requires rethinking of what an intelligent human being can do. Our belief is the skilling of workforce will change. People will move away from mundane tasks to higher level skills. Secretarial work will be passe,” he pointed out.
With around 1.3 billion people and growing, India is a huge market for any industry, Janey admitted.
“Skilling our people through initiatives like the government’s Skill India and courses by educational institutions on Big Data are key, as sectors are undergoing digital transformation,” he added.
With India among the top five markets in the world for Dell EMC’s services, after America, China, Europe and Britain, the company is planning to hire more techies in India, Janey said, but did not specify the present workforce present and how many are being hired in the subcontinent.
Dell EMC claims to be the leader in India’s storage market with 43 per cent share by revenue and second-largest in server market with 26 per cent share by revenue.
The company is also said to have leadership in flash-storage and hyper-converged infrastructure segments.
“We are investing $4.5 billion on research and development in fiscal 2018-19. India contributes significantly to the research, particularly in servers,” Janey stated.
“India is ahead of other developing nations in the use of digital infrastructure,” he disclosed.
The country is also at par with the developed nations in innovation as advancements in e-commerce industry like cash-on-delivery and video subscriptions allowing download options by streaming sites are Indian innovations for the world, driven by consumer needs, the official said.
With its diverse offerings through hardware, software and data storage areas, the company is upbeat about its market share increasing in India as businesses head for disruption.
(Bhavana Akella can be contacted at bhavana.a@ians.in )
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Corporate, Corporate Buzz, Large Enterprise
Hyderabad : Tata Projects Limited’s “Smart Cities Business Unit” has been awarded the Rs 3,057 crore Bharat Net project in Chhattisgarh.
The project involves laying of optical fibre network that follows ring architecture with Internet Protocol — Multi Protocol Label Switching (IP-MPLS) technology, the Hyderabad-based infrastructure company said on Thursday.
The implementation period for the project is 12 months from starting of work. Conceived under the Digital India initiative the project will link 85 blocks and 5,987 gram panchayats across the 27 districts in the state by providing broadband and mobile phone connectivity.
Chhattisgarh has the lowest mobile network penetration at 29 per cent, whereas the national average is 72 per cent. About 2.6 crore people of the state will directly benefit from it, the company said.
Tata Projects will lay 48 core Optical Fibre Cable (OFC) Network across the state covering 32,466 km.
With the completion of this project, high speed broadband between 1Gbps to 10 Gbps will be provided free of cost through Wi-Fi spots at each gram panchayat which will enable people to leverage the benefits of internet in their daily life.
Tata Projects Limited’s Managing Director Vinayak Deshpande said that once the project is completed it will help in strengthening Chattisgarh’s economy and enable people to lead their lives with much ease.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Corporate, Corporate Buzz, Large Enterprise, Markets, Networking, Online Marketing, Technology
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella
New Delhi : Faster adoption of Microsoft Office 365 and made for India ‘Kaizala’ app are helping several Indian enterprises — from banking to healthcare — unlock their true potential and transform digitally, India-born Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said here on Tuesday.
Addressing the India Today Conclave in the capital, Nadella said that in the world full of immense possibilities with disrupting technologies changing the business models, Microsoft has helped the State Bank of India (SBI) take a giant leap to Cloud and modernise its workplace.
“We are thrilled to partner with SBI on their digital transformation as they harness the Intelligent Cloud and build new digital capability to empower their employees; engage customers in new ways and transform their products and services, while maintaining security, trust and compliance with industry regulations,” Nadella said.
The SBI has chosen Office 365, the cloud-powered productivity solution, from Microsoft to improve communication and collaboration among its workforce.
This is one of the largest deployments of Office 365 in India, spanning SBI’s countrywide network of 23,423 branches, enabling 263,000 employees and servicing more than 500 million customer accounts.
“In the mobile-first and mobile-only country like India, the ‘Kaizala’ app is transforming Indian firms, from retail to healthcare, how they connect with customers and partners efficiently,” the Microsoft executive noted.
Microsoft ‘Kaizala’ has seen significant adoption among firms such as YES Bank, Apollo Telemedicine, United Phosphorous Limited and Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan, who are currently piloting the solution for their internal teams.
The Andhra Pradesh government is also using ‘Kaizala’ for real time governance.
Using ‘Kaizala’, firms can connect with their employees and the extended value chain.
The product offers a simple and familiar chat interface and goes beyond to make everyone more productive using Surveys, Polls, Jobs, Meetings and other actions, right in your chats.
“In this era of Intelligent Edge and Intelligent Cloud – and not to forget Artificial Intelligence (AI) that will drive this era — we need to make a great sense of humongous data that is around us to build right digital capabilities,” Nadella told the audience.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate, Corporate Governance, Markets, Networking, News, Online Marketing, Politics, Technology
New Delhi : Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will launch Google’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI)-based digital payment service called “Tez” on Monday, making India’s digital payment ecosystem war even more competitive.
“FM Shri @arunjaitley to launch the Google Digital Payment app ‘TEZ’ on Monday, 18th September, 2017 in the national capital,” the Finance Ministry confirmed in a tweet on Saturday.
The report of Google entering India’s fast growing digital payment ecosystem appeared in the media on Thursday, following which Google India sent out an invite for an event in New Delhi on September 18.
“As we continue to make strides in ensuring that our products continue to serve the needs of everyone, we invite you to a press conference to share details on the launch of a new product developed grounds up for India,” the invite read.
“Tez” (meaning fast in Hindi) may work like Android Pay.
UPI is a payment system launched by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) and regulated by the Reserve Bank of India which facilitates the instant fund transfer between two bank accounts on the mobile platform.
The other big player to join India’s growing digital payment market is Facebook-owned WhatsApp.
WhatsApp has been in the news for working towards a UPI-based interface on its platform.
According to media reports, the leading messaging platform is already in talks with the NPCI and a few banks to facilitate financial transactions via UPI.
According to the blog website “WABetaInfo”, WhatsApp is giving shape to its plans towards bank-to-bank transfer using the UPI system.
Some mobile messaging platforms like WeChat and Hike Messenger already support UPI-based payment services.
The infrastructure of digital payments in India is expected to increase three-fold by the end of 2017 with almost five million electronic point of sale (PoS) machines, the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) has said.
“We expect that by December, the number will actually go up to five million PoS, which means that the infrastructure for digital payments is going to grow three times in the short span of one year,” MeitY Secretary Aruna Sundararajan said.
—IANS
