Bridgital Nation: Solving technology’s people problem
Book brilliantly defines India as an antarlaapika – which means a puzzle that, has its answers hidden inside it. The book focuses biggest challenges: jobs and access.
• India has a massive jobs challenge on its hand. 90mn people will come of working age between 2020 and 2030 – a continent’s worth of eager, ambitious, energetic young jobseekers. So finding gainful employment is a real challenge.
• The access challenge puts services such as quality health and education out of reach for millions of Indians – a situation that has arisen in large part because there aren’t enough qualified people.
The book defines the Bridgital approach – Technology is there to amplify India’s existing resources and extend them to many more Indians. Bridgital does this by reimagining how services can be delivered and how people can use their talent differently, once they are aided by technology.
This book also throws light on two more strategies –
(1) Bringing women to the workforce
(2) Entrepreneurs everywhere
• Important point discussed in book is – smart policies focused on childcare provision and parental leave, and promoting attitudinal shifts in society around working women are goof places to begin.
• As far as entrepreneurship is concern – Bridgital clusters, coupled with the deeper use of digital governance to transform the relationship between SME’s and the bureaucracy, can positively channel the entrepreneurial spirit inherent throughout the nation.
According to authors, the Bridgital approach has potential to create @ 30 mn gainful jobs across six sectors by 2025. These are Healthcare, Education, Agriculture, Logistics, Financial Services and Judiciary.
Putting constructive effort in these 6 six sectors with Bridgital approach will help to generate to jobs and give meaningful employment.
The books talks about three major transformations –in technology, talent and vision
The important point quoted in this book is
“The combination of Human and AI will certainly be smarter and more effective than either human or AI alone.”
• There is need of developing smart systems to derive and refine deep insights from data. Combination of power of technologic and data need to be used for contextual solutions to meet the needs.
• According to authors, beyond basic literacy and numeracy, India needs to design an education system based on five principles: digital skills; twenty-first-century skills (creativity, collaboration and critical thinking); new-age apprenticeships; lifelong learning; and entrepreneurial thinking.
• Once tech-driven disruption will unfold at an exponential rate; India need to have vision to anticipate this trajectory. With vision in place India’s goal must be the seamless integration of human capacities, digital tools and AI.
• New Vision, which should emphasize flexibility, adaptability and mobility.
According to authors; the future of work will be imagined, designed, tested, and made in India. We have all the tools, and we have already tested the wates.
In all Bridgital, approach can be adopted to take on challenges India is facing and to sail through it.
PS: Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi unveiled the book “Bridgital Nation” and presented its first copy to Shri Ratan Tata in an event organized at 7, Lok Kalyan Marg, New Delhi in Oct,2019. The book has been written by Shri N Chandrasekaran and Ms. Roopa Purushottam.