When former Prime Minister P. V Narasimha Rao and Finance Minister Manmohan Singh co-authored India’s first economic reforms in ’90s which revolutionised the mobile telephone making it cheaper than the daily ‘Roti’ nobody must have thought at that time it was the beginning of the big dream of ‘Digital India’ what Prime Minister Narendra Modi carried forward to make mobile and internet linked data transfer so deep into the country’s business veins especially in rural areas a reality. Today, a private sector company Reliance dedicated its services to an unimaginable level. This can turn into a game changer for the mobile-linked services in the country i.e. one country one charge with no roaming, no voice call charges. The dream of Prime Minister to make every Indian move digitally and electronically upward is not far. Down side of this digital growth is pathetical. The recent incidents where a man has to carry his wife’s body for miles to reach home for cremation as he was denied an ambulance by the hospital staff, and another incident of a father seeking help for his injured son to be shifted to a hospital was forced to carry him on his shoulders and the child breathing his last on father’s shoulders, tell volumes about the real story of India’s development. Whatever the reforms and economic progress we have made is one side of ‘India shining’ story. The real India lives without basic facilities like clean drinking water, basic health facilities, electricity, education and the worst better road connectivity and many more to make the progress report look ‘good’. The non-inclusive growth what we talk of is confined to cities, metros whereas many parts of rural India live without the basic facilities. Growth, development and business should be people-inclusive and not secluded ones confined to particular section of the society. Till date the economic reforms have not been able to reach the target groups and somewhere midway has been watered down by the political ambitions and lethargic bureaucracy and red-tapism which has imbedded deep into our own society and system. To make India’s dream run successful what we need is to eradicate these maladies, till then the expected results would always remain elusive. Caution is needed.
