India is waiting with bated breath to see the 5G rollout in the country, heralding a new wave of technology in the daily life of the people. The scale of 5G-enabled technology in the lives of people is being said to be humongous. It’s also highly encouraging that the socio-economic ecosystem is fully geared up to embrace 5G.
Gujarat has constituted a committee of secretaries to work out the minute details of the rollout of 5G in governance. Several IT ministers were present at the Indian Mobile Congress 2022 in Delhi to gather first-hand experience of the scope of 5G in the governance structure.
Anyone who visits a government office comes out with a feeling of a wired, cluttered and suffocating workplace, with tired faces sitting behind desks. Life and buoyancy vigour seen in the startup ecosystem or even the corporate places are missing from government offices, which smell of files eaten away by moths. The 5G technology can help make smart offices without wires, papers, files and the clutter. This smart office could be the basis for super-governance from the state secretariat to the district administration, going all the way to the local bodies -- municipal corporations and the Gram Panchayat.
Time has come for India to witness the magical machine to machine learning, which once deployed in the governance structure could bring in changes that would otherwise take several decades to achieve, in areas of education, healthcare, municipal administration, sanitation and citizens' services. The city going under water after a few days of heavy rains speak volumes about the governance not yet being ahead of time. Funds are spent for expansion of primary school education, but there are issues of sub-letting by teachers, which dilute the aims of the governments in the states. The governments make heavy capital investments for hospital equipment, but they are not deployed to the optimum capacities to serve the needs of the people. The list is endless.
The 5G, in all likelihood, will see a much faster rollout than 4G. Drones will be a part of the daily life of people. Once they start flying on the wings of 5G, there could be a tectonic shift in the expectations of the people. Here, the states need to catch the bus early to take the rightful position, with the men in the driving seats equipped with skills that can help people benefit from governance that is ahead of its time.
The rollout of the 5G-led technology would be in phases, and its adoption in governance is most likely to be staggered because of capacity constraints. This should call for prioritising 5G interventions in a select few areas for quick gains, and the initial targets should be healthcare, primary education, sanitation, functioning of the agricultural mandis, public works departments, citizen service centres, policing and judicial administration.
Some of the startups have demonstrated the capacity to eliminate the scourge of manual scavenging. This needs to be scaled up with the help of technology. The ITI infrastructure, which has been significantly scaled up, must be deployed for the wider rollout of 5G-enabled technology. The ambulances run by the hospitals and state governments must ride the 5G technology bus to save lives of the people. We know that India needs more doctors, particularly in smaller cities and rural areas,
and 5G should help bridge the gaps, with ambulances functioning as full-fledged hospitals.
The local bodies must know before the rains come down heavily that the storm drains are choked, and drones riding on 5G should chase the private contractors for not fulfilling their commitments in the contracts awarded to them by the Public Works Departments and municipal bodies. Roads should be free of potholes.
Data analytics will prove transformational in public-interface governance and herald transparency and accountability, which are currently dependent on human interventions. Some of the district magistrates bring remarkable turnarounds in governance, but once they are transferred, the people lament that they are back to square one. This malaise in the governance can end only when administration gives sanctity to technology-enabled processes, and 5G promises that it’s not just a dream.
Sumeet Bhasin is Director, Public Policy Research Centre. Twitter: @sumeetbhasin