Vimarsh: Talk by Dr Gulshan Rai on ‘Digital Disruption in India’, at the Vivekananda International Foundation (VIF), 11 February 2019

Welcome address by Dr Arvind Gupta, Director VIF

Dear friends,

It gives me great pleasure to welcome Dr Gulshan Rai, National Cyber Security Coordinator, National Security Council Secretariat, Government of India to today’s Vimarsh talk on ‘Digital Disruption in India’.

Dr Gulshan Rai, a noted cyber security specialist, is the first incumbent of the post that was created in the National Security Council Secretariat in 2015 as a part of the 2013 cyber security policy of the Government of India. In his present assignment, Dr Rai has been closely involved with the formulation of national cyber security policies. He has also been implementing the cyber security research and development programs of the Government. Dr Rai has nearly four decades of experience in electronics and software. Before being appointed as the National Cyber Security Coordinator, Dr Rai was the Director of Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) for nearly 10 years. Having set up the CERT, he developed a wide range of technical collaborations between the CERT and similar organisations across the world.

In his long career, Dr Rai has been closely involved with the numerous projects of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology including the setting up of the ERNET, which was the precursor of the today’s National Knowledge Network (NKN) connecting various academic and research institutions on high-speed fiber. He has also been an active participant in the Government’s cyber diplomacy initiatives and has conducted negotiations and discussions on cyber security with several countries. A passionate advocate of training, he has helped set up cyber training institutions in the country. He has been helping several government departments to improve their cybersecurity infrastructure.

Dr Rai has been involved in the evolution of the IT Act 2000 and the amendments to the IT Act of 2008. More recently, he was a member of the Justice Srikrishna Committee on a Data Protection Framework for India. He is a well-known figure in the IT industry circles.

Friends, hardly a day passes without some mention or the other in the media of emerging digital technologies which will transform our daily lives in a significant way. A NASSCOM survey of 2017 listed 10 technologies which will transform the global economy. These include mobile Internet, artificial intelligence, virtual and augmented reality, cloud technologies, genomics, Internet of Things, advanced robotics, biometric technologies, 3D printing and block chain technology. Together, these technologies are leading the way in the fourth revolution in industrial production. The healthcare and education sectors as well as e-commerce and a governor sectors are also going to be deeply impacted by these technologies.

Emerging technologies raise hope and concern at the same time. On the one hand they make our lives better by improving connectivity and productivity, on the other, there are apprehensions of their overtaking human beings in intelligence and becoming autonomous, making human beings redundant. Yet another major fear is that these technologies will lead to destruction of jobs as we know them. While new jobs will surely be created, they will require high skills which may not be available to vast mass of our population. Many surveys have pointed out to the fact that nearly 50 percent of the jobs that will exist in five years from now do not exist today. This means that the skills that we learn today will become outdated in the next five years and new skills for new jobs would need to be learnt. Can we live with such a fast paced change?

In the technology domain, humans are so far in control. This is a matter of some comfort. However, artificial intelligence and such like technologies will change all that. For instance, there is widespread concern about the emergence of autonomous weapons which will take decisions on their own and bypass the humans. In 2017 the UN set up a group of governmental experts to look into the pros and cons of the autonomous weapons.

We are already seeing the convergence of numerous technologies like computing, sensors, storage, communication, satellites is beginning to take place. The present-day mobile phones are the first generation of products arising out of convergence of these technologies. We are entering the age of Internet of Things which harbingers the age of hyper-connectivity in which billions of sensors and devices would be connected with each other talking to each other and working seamlessly. Many products of this nature are already in the market, particularly in the consumer domain. It is estimated that nearly 2 billion sensors and devices connected with each other will be functioning in India in the next five years.

Humanity has been exposed to disruptive technologies for millennia. The invention of the printing press brought the age of mass publishing. This helped in the first examination and spread of ideas with tremendous consequences for society. The advent of electricity, telegraph, radio, TV, transistor, radar, satellites, computer and internet et cetera are some examples of technologies that changed our lives in significant ways. Artificial intelligence would also count as one of the great game changing technologies. New digital technologies are radically transforming Industrial production methods. Artificial Intelligence is creating more powerful, more capable, more autonomous robotic system which, alongwith 3-D printing will revolutionize industrial processes.

India cannot remain immune to the ongoing Industry 4.0 revolution that is sweeping the world. The Indian innovation system will need to be overhauled if Indian industry has to remain ahead of the curve. Education and R&D, skills and training, and business models the most important factors in the ongoing transformation of industrial landscape in the country. According to Engineering R&D(ER&D) Report 2018, “India is expected to grow to $42 bn by FY 2022” in ER&D sector. This should be seen in the global ER&D perspective. According to the same report “the Global ER&D…is projected to touch $2 tn globally by 2022. Out of this, 38 percent will be contributed by top 1,000 corporates.” The Report highlighted six major trends – Internet of Things, Big Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, Cyber Security, Advanced Robotics, Mobile Applications and Digital Reality – that are currently driving digital ER&D across multiple sectors globally.

It is being said that digital technologies are set to change our lifestyles, our behaviour in a fundamental way. Is this hype or reality? What impact will these technologies have on us? How is the digital technologies scene in India? These are some of the questions which we need to ponder over as new technologies emerge from decades of research and are commented into products and services. We could not have had better person than Dr Gulshan Rai, who has spent his lifetime studying these technologies, to talk to us on these issues. Today he will share with us his views on disruption caused by disruptive technologies.

Over to Dr Gulshan Rai.