IT Minister K.T. Rama Rao has said that India, given its broad spectrum of economic, social and geographical scenarios, was well positioned to act as a global test bed for building emerging technology-based solutions, which can be readily scaled across Third World countries to achieve sustainable development goals.
The Minister said that Telangana has formulated actionable technology policy frameworks for the State in emerging tech areas such as Blockchain, Drones, Artificial Intelligence, Open Data, Cyber Security, and Cloud. He was speaking at the World Economic Forum’s virtual panel session on “Harnessing Emerging Technologies in India” on Friday.
The panelists deliberated on “How can emerging technologies further boost productivity, expedite the growth transition and reinforce resilience to future shocks to meet India's pressing challenges?”. The participants included Rajan Anandan, Managing Director, Sequoia Capital; Meagan Fallone, Director, Barefoot College International and Jai Shroff, Global CEO, UPL Ltd. The session was moderated by Diksha Madhok.
Steps taken by TS
During his opening remarks, Mr Rama Rao spoke about the steps initiated by Telangana government to leverage innovation and emerging technologies in various sectors like agriculture, healthcare and education. He also gave an overview of the various multi-stakeholder initiatives like AI for Agriculture and Medicines from the Sky.
He said Telangana was investing in improving digital infrastructure via the T-Fiber project. Responding to a question, the Minister opined that digital readiness has been instrumental for a V-shaped economic recovery during the COVID pandemic. Conventional businesses rapidly went online across the country, leveraging improving internet accessibility. Internet has enabled access to new markets helping first movers to not only recover but thrive during the pandemic.
In his concluding remarks, the IT Minister said that underlying disparities in healthcare, education, financial stability and technology have led the COVID-19 crisis to disproportionately impact certain groups and countries.
