‘India will become a data rich nation, before it becomes financially rich’, said Amitabh Kant, CEO, NITI Aayog, while addressing the Tata Trusts, Tech 4 Transformation conference.

Kant emphasized on the importance of innovation and harnessing the power of technology to educate and empower.

‘India has become integral part of the global supply chain and to maintain the rapid acceleration of growth, we must focus on social sectors like education and healthcare’, Kant said.

He further added that the government needs to implement a very concentrated approach to lift people above poverty line. Ground implementation of technology in the rural sector will bring the change for India.

Kant highlighted the shifting of government from inputs and outputs monitoring to outcome based monitoring. Underlining the importance of transformation in the education sector, Kant stressed on transformation of institutes like Medical Council and UGC.

The biggest positive of the current government is the implementation of direct benefit transfer. Benefits of schemes are reaching people directly and the government is putting huge thrust on direct benefit transfer.

Eradicating the middle men and ensuring the benefits reach directly to the beneficiary is a path breaking step by the current government, Amitabh Kant added.

Government of India’s progressive step towards JAM Trinity; the introduction of Aadhar based payments or online payments, are solving a great deal of problems in rural India. The program has great future prospects and the government is pushing technology for change, Kant said.

Highlighting the weak link of the government, Kant said, ‘government is terrible at in-ground implementation. The government is good at conceptualization, but fails at implementation’. This is where the new players need to step in, as the goal to a technologically advanced nation can only be achieved by the intervention of private people and private trusts.

Amitabh Kant further talked about the changing trends and fast disruption happening in the field of healthcare and education in India, mentioning Facebook’s investment in Indian online learning platform, ‘Byju’s’.

Government and NITI Aayog are quite determined to bring a technological transformation in the next 3 years. It is not possible for the government and NITI Aayog to bring the transformation unaccompanied, to witness a real deal of growth; the private players must step in and do their part, Kant concluded.