The results of the recent General Elections have indicated that the promise of development and creation of jobs have been amongst the important reasons for the resounding success of BJP. As the new government gets ready to set out its priorities and prepare the roadmap for meeting its electoral promises and expectations of the people who have exercised their franchise, the strategic and the enabling role digital technology could play should be underscored and due importance should be accorded to planning and implementation of digital infrastructure strategy alongside the developmental agenda. While infrastructure creation forms the backbone for the nation?s development and power, roads, railways and ports would require huge attention, investment is also required in creating state of the art digital infrastructure that will enable connectivity and access to information and services to 1.23 billion people of this nation with the potential to fuel commerce and industry.

Digital infrastructure at the core of developmental efforts will help trigger a whole range of actions that have the potential to energise the economic activity and welfare of people at multiple levels.

With reference to the people in the rural and semi rural sector in particular, electricity and digital infrastructure creation should go hand in hand. Just as the cable revolution in the 1990s transformed entertainment and information access and India skipped a few generations in terms of content access and delivery formats to be able to provide near state-of-the-art experience to millions of Indians, we have an opportunity to bring about similar transformation in the lives of our people in a short span of time with digital infrastructure.

The country can boast of mobile revolution which has resulted in more than 930 million telephone subscribers (as of March 2014) and inexpensive modes of communication and information access. It is now time we leveraged this network and worked upon the last mile connectivity so that technology can contribute to areas beyond communication.

A vibrant digital infrastructure with the capability for high speed and large bandwidth will spawn a number of new businesses both for the domestic market as well as the international market, ensure financial inclusion at the grassroots, enhance quality of education at all levels by connecting experts from anywhere in the country or the world to the learners and educational institutions, support scores of people to find employment opportunities in rural India without having the need for migrating to cities and thus nurture local and traditional village culture as well as livelihood opportunities and improve healthcare by creating better awareness and informed decision making.

Digital infrastructure augmentation will also involve rethinking existing policies, plans and incentives to bring about integration of various technologies to facilitate broadband, enhance computing power, exploit cloud computing capabilities and harness grid based resource sharing. The target of $1 trillion investment in infrastructure as per the Five Year Plan of 2012-17 is steep and would have several contenders for these resources.

Hence, viable public-private partnership models need to be devised with a multi-layered investment opportunity that would make it attractive for multinationals and the Indian conglomerates to become stakeholders in creating the digital infrastructure for the nation.

In order to ensure that speed, better ROI and outcomes that lead to better quality of lives are possible to be achieved, the current governance framework also requires to be reviewed. Instead of the traditional ministerial divisions of IT and telecom sectors, an integrated approach of merging the two ministries into a common digital technology ministry may be considered with the view to creating sufficient room for flexible and efficient service delivery capabilities. In parallel, there is an urgent need to build innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem comprising of angel investors, R&D establishments, seed capital and nurturing and mentoring new business ideas that could lead to successful business models. Just as National Skills Development Corporation was conceived to help foster skill development in different sectors, now there is an urgent need to build entrepreneurial zeal and ecosystem through appropriate agencies and invite successful entrepreneurs of Indian origin to play active part along with Indian entrepreneurs and business houses in making meaningful interventions in the educational institutions and setting up innovation hubs. The National Innovation Council that was set up with this objective requires to be given a new thrust and possibly bring in significantly more industry flavour to its initiatives.

In order for the digital infrastructure backbone to deliver the desired results, two other areas would require attention. The first area requires urgent attention is Intellectual Property Rights (IPR). With sound policy framework and legislative support if we can demonstrate to the world at large that it is safe and profitable to transact business in India, several doors will open for investment and trans border commerce.

Apart from policy framework with respect to IPR, there is a need for an effective implementation mechanism and a watchdog to create confidence amongst the international fraternity. The second area that would require attention is digital literacy. While we have nearly 3 million IT-savvy engineering graduates coming out of higher education institutions each year and have more than 3 million professionals currently employed directly with the IT sector and nearly four times that number being indirectly employed, time has come to turn our attention to get millions of other Indians to get ready to benefit from the digital infrastructure. Just as the National Literacy Mission has focused on eradicating illiteracy in the country, we need a time bound mission mode action plan to spread digital literacy amongst the masses. NASSCOM Foundation is working on the mission of digital literacy with the objective of making at least one member from every one of 250 million Indian families, equipped with basic digital skills. If this goal is championed by the government, corporate bodies, NGOs and educational institutions, the digital literacy mission can add significant power to the development agenda that the new government is desirous of embarking upon. Thus, a country which is blessed with the demographic dividend and proven competencies in IT services and related business models can maximise these strengths with the digital infrastructure that has the ability to bridge the divide between the digital haves and the have-nots in a relatively short span of time and demonstrate to the world at large that IT need not be viewed as an engine for export earnings alone but can become an engine for transformation of rural India and a tool for realising the aspirations of people.

The writer is CEO, Global Talent Track, a corporate training solutions company