Digitization. India's Holy Grail?

For most of us procuring our child’s birth certificate, somehow losing it and applying for and getting a duplicate can be a constant source of nightmare!

And this is just one document affecting one aspect of life in India!

Imagine it happening to something like your passport or degree certificates…..nothing less than a scary movie!

It is for this reason that the recent talk of Digitization of records and the wider aspect of Digital India makes a lot of sense.

For most of us in India, given our hidden penchant for documentary evidences of all kinds, the first thing that digitization brings to our mind is document digitization and cloud storage! We are after all a paranoid people who have to contend with huge, huge distances of red-tape laid before us in the form of a red carpet every time we need documents/ paper work etc from the government!

Is that all to digitization? The answer is a resounding “NO”. There is more to it than document storage and record keeping!

For a start, imagine education online, entertainment online……anything other than the basics can be digitized and beamed from the cloud! Food, clothing, home….and love though may not be within the scope of digitization any time soon! For the rest, there are the clouds!

And why not? It saves costs, is convenient, fairly secure and constantly evolves with time and need!

The next obvious question that may come to any layman….where lie the speed breakers?

In the Indian context, digitization is still in its nascent stage in most places due to peculiar factors such as unavailability of enough internet bandwidth (yes, we are way below the world bandwidth standards by most measures!) and nothing very positive happening any time soon.

Next in line is standard of education. Digitization calls for a level of understanding of the medium and goes beyond smartphones.

Another contributing factor is the sheer volume of undigitized information which is humongous. Besides its scope, it is also complicated and confusing with large volumes of data duplication. People at the feeding end too do not seem to be enthused to set the house in order any time soon.

In the pervading gloom, there is that proverbial silver lining! For once the Government itself is very upbeat about digitization and if the Power-that-be pushes for it, people down the line wily-nily accept it and do the needful.

In the Indian context, given our numbers and vexed issues and deprivations, digitization is the only means to give everyone their dues, be it things like subsidy, pension, insurance products or education. Without making a hash of it, digitization over time will evolve as the medium which shall take the tame the raging bull elephant----provided it does not turn into a white elephant!

At our end CADashboard too hopes this medium takes off. After all being in the digitized service provider space, we obviously know what it is and what it can deliver. To know more about CADashboard, a premium cloud-based product for CA, CS, Lawyers and all those involved with compliance, do visit us at www.cadashboard.com

And yes, your comments to this article are more than welcome!