Budget 2021’s Date with Big Data

Context: Budget 2021 should fund Data-based economic world order to unleash an employment and productivity multiplier through funding and regulation of collection and sharing of national data.

Key Elements of Data-based Economic World Order

• Big Data (BD): BD is the large volume of information generated by the masses using online platforms and the Internet of Things (IoT), or interconnected electronic gadgets. 
• Artificial Intelligence (AI): AI is used to analyse the information to reveal trends, predict future patterns of interest to businesses and sciences.

Significance and Benefits for India:

• Chance to lead the Data Science and AI Industrial Revolutions (IR): While India did not benefit from the first two IR, but India has the required ingredients for AI-based IR in terms of -
  • Highest mobile phone users, internet data consumption and technical knowhow.
  • India’s diversity in terms of economic, geographic, climatic, genomic and microbiological; Predictive power and associated benefits of BD increase exponentially with the size and diversity)
• Countering public policy challenges:
  • Identification of poor and backward habitats through satellite and drone imageries.
  • Insights on mobility, socioeconomic interactions and consumption patterns at local and national levels through mobile networks data.
  • Reduce fiscal costs of welfare schemes by improving data-precision; Unlike one-size-fits- approach, target groups can be customised using BD.
  • Strengthen Covid-19 vaccination strategy: to optimise herd immunity by reducing diagnostics and treatment costs and enabling doctors to make real-time data-driven decisions.
    • Improved quality of treatment: by timely detection of diseases and medical intervention through Electronic Health Records (EHR) combined with AI.
    • Delivery of low-cost medical services: to neglected geographies promoted by extensive mobile penetration.
  • Monitoring Educational outcomes: BD analytics can be used to monitor performance of teachers and schools in terms of dropouts, educational attainments and employability of their students.
  • Better handling of crop damage claims by farmers: high-resolution satellite and drone data can precisely estimate crop damage by pests or calamities. (increasing insurance efficiency)

Challenges’ and Way Forward in India’s Data Infrastructure:

• Lack of Indigenous Capabilities: in terms of indigenous hosting of video conferencing and email services of government and making diverse datasets mutually compatible.
  • Indian scientific and strategic data is stored beyond its national boundaries (like on Gmail servers).
  • Data on education, crimes, logistics, and health (lies in bits and bytes in numerous hospitals, clinics and labs) needs to be digitised and made interoperable.
• Integration of dispersed data: would require public and private cooperation.
  • Private investors can’t be expected to invest heavily in storing public data.
  • However; Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019, requires sharing of non-proprietary data with other Indian entities.
  • A National data pool where all data generators shall be mandated to share all impersonalised data, will boost productivity, nurture the startup ecosystem and generate employment.