De-extinction will also become possible! – Lakshmi Narayanan, ex-vice chairman and ex-CEO of Cognizant and former Chairman of ICT Academy
Nation Development Program’s recently published multi-dimensional poverty index, India is no longer a poor country. In the last 15 years, more than 420 million people have been lifted out of poverty. And we are left with just about 220 million people. Given the rapid progress that we have been making, I do believe that in the next three to five years, we’ll be able to lift even those people out of poverty.
Bad days are over…
Reasons that have been highlighted as the cause of poverty are health, nutrition, sanitation, cooking fuel and housing. Now that we know the reasons, it looks manageable. According to the report, India fares well on the technological assets front that include access to communication, mobile phones, mass media. This shows that we have come out of the bad days and we are looking ahead at good days. And one of the principle reasons for this kind of progress is technology.
Digital literacy of the elderly…
Technology helps in betterment. It helps to address corruption and bring about transparency. Another key initiative should be to focus on digital literacy of the elderly. They may not be numerically literate but we need to make them digitally literate. This can be attempted, through language-based, voice-based devices.This will help to create a far more inclusive society. Inclusion would make data accessible to the larger population. In turn, their ability to understand data, governance and to question will improve.
Giving back an earth as is…
With reference to technology, I am sure it would aid to find solutions for several of our problems. I do believe that even for climate change technology will find solutions. Scientists are talking about the possibility of recreation of extinct animals. If this happens, we no longer need to worry about extinction. We could create a world that all of us can enjoy and at the same time leave it back to the younger generation as we inherited it.
Model Leadership is a concern
In terms of our ability to lead the next 30 years as a progressive nation, I always go back to what, Dr C K Prahalad said, we should focus on economic vibrancy, technological strength and model leadership.
Clearly on the technology side, our strength is increasing and we will be among the top 10 per cent of nations. In terms of economic vibrancy also, we seem to be doing well, despite some challenges that we had in the past few years.
Model leadership continues to be a challenge. As far as external affairs is concerned, we have been somewhat unbiased, taking a position that is appreciated by both the people within the country as well as outside. But morals within the country is a big area that we have to tackle.
