New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi Saturday blamed the delayed reforms for losing the opportunity to create world-class products such as Google due to the restrictions on the use of satellite data, particularly the geospatial data which deprived India’s tech industry and startups an opportunity to create services like Google Maps which today dominate the world market.
Referring to the recent changes made by the Centre for using the geospatial data, which permits private entities and Indian startups to use satellite data for commercial purposes, the Prime Minister said Google and other such products would be Indian products if the country had been able to do this reform ten years ago.
“You people must have seen that sometime back we took an extremely important decision. We have liberalised the rules related to the use of Geospatial data,” Prime Minister Modi told chief ministers in the meeting of the governing council of Niti Aayog, which has been organised virtually due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Had we been able to do that 10 years ago what we are able to do now then perhaps these Google and others would not have been developed outside India,” said the Prime Minister.
Urging the state chief ministers to reduce the burden of compliance, both on businesses and citizens, the Prime Minister said it was important to improve the Ease of Doing Business and Ease of Living to realise the country’s potential.
Prime Minister Modi said such products could not be developed in the country due to the restrictive policies adopted by previous governments.
“They (Google, Google Maps) would have been developed within the country. These products are developed by our (Indian) talent, but the product is not ours,” said the Prime Minister.
Earlier this week, the Centre allowed private entities to collect and use geospatial data for making maps and use the data in other commercial applications.
Geospatial data deals with the information about things and objects located on the surface of the earth, be it a moving object or some stationary object or the geographical feature of an area. The information is widely used in applications like Google Maps and also in delivery of goods and services.
Unlocking the use of geospatial data would benefit startups, agriculture sector, oil & gas and defence sectors and help the country to achieve the goal of becoming a $5 trillion economy in the next five years, the PM had said on Monday.
According to Science and Technology Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan, it could unlock the use of geospatial data worth Rs 1 lakh crore over the next 10 years.
Addressing the chief ministers in the Niti Aayog meeting on Saturday, the Prime Minister said the decision has given a lot of relief to Indian startups and the tech sector.
“I believe that this decision will help in improving the ease of living of the common man of the country,” said the Prime Minister.
Indian talent flourishes abroad
According to various estimates, US tech giants like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple and several others have a large number of Indian engineers and scientists working for them, developing cutting edge technology and world class products and services that have completely changed the lifestyle in the last decade, making these startups the world’s largest and most profitable companies.
However, not a single product or service, which is a global leader, is owned by Indian tech companies as most of them do job work for large global corporations in the field of technology, banking and finance, telecom and other sectors of the economy, rather than launching their own products and services.
While omnipresent Google owns the most popular email service Gmail, dominates the internet search engine market, has most popular map applications like Google Maps, and most widely used internet browser - Chrome. Above all, it also owns Android, which is the most preferred operating system for smart devices including smart phones and smart TVs.
Similarly, Microsoft, founded by Bill Gates, owns Microsoft Windows, the most popular computer operating system and also Microsoft Office, the most popular office productivity suite, and host of other services, including Azure Cloud service and LinkedIn professional networking platform.
While Google is headed by Sundar Pichai, Microsoft is headed by Satya Nadella, both of them engineers from India, leading the top two tech giants with a large number of Indian engineers working on cutting edge tech like artificial intelligence and machine learning.
In his talk with chief ministers and policy makers, the Prime Minister lamented the fact that the burden of over-compliance was not only stifling the entrepreneurship but it was also making the lives of ordinary Indians difficult.
“Friends, I will urge for two things. Today, we have got an opportunity in the world. In order to realise the opportunity, our effort should be to create the Ease of Doing Business and for citizens of the country, our effort should be to Ensure Ease of Living,” Prime Minister Modi said in his address.
The Prime Minister said the Ease of Doing Business was crucial to position India globally, and in order to tap this opportunity both the Centre and States need to reform their laws.
Prime Minister Modi also urged States to constitute small committees to do away with archaic laws as the Centre has repealed over 1,500 laws in the last six years.
“I see that a common man is subjected to a huge compliance burden. There are thousands of compliance requirements, which we can do away with. There is no need to ask them to comply again and again,” he said.
He told the chief ministers that the Cabinet Secretary was dedicatedly pursuing the matter to ensure the Ease of Living of citizens where compliance requirements were related to the Union government and urged the States to follow the same policy.
The Prime Minister said: “In order to fulfill the expectations and hopes of citizens of the country, in order to provide an easy life for our citizens, we will have to focus on the Ease of Living.”
The Prime Minister urged the chief ministers to work in tandem, where both the Centre and States, working as a nation, will not allow the opportunity to make India a global leader slip away.
"We will not waste this opportunity," Prime Minister Modi told the chief ministers.
