India on the cusp of an IoT revolution?

Mark this. The 2020s will be the decade of the Internet of Things (IoT). That might seem like a strange statement if you still think of India as a poor developing country. From 1947 onward to the 1990s, India struggled to give the basic Roti Kapda aur Makaan to its citizens. So when the then NASSCOM chief Dewang Mehta declared Roti, Kapda, Bijli aur Bandwidth as India’s mantra for the 21st century, it seemed even stranger. That was true even as we entered the 2010s.

But how things have changed as we enter the end of this decade! India has removed record citizens out of poverty, created a world toilet building record and is on the road to 100% electrification and bank accounts even as online business is seeing great growth. India also became the first country in the world to have an online linked biometric scheme for all its citizens. China’s facial recognition scheme came much later. We are finally being hailed as a future No. 1 or No. 2 global economy.

But more importantly, India has finally jumped on to the broadband wagon and Dewang’s quintet seems imminent. India’s mobile broadband usage is in the range of stratospheric 10GB per smartphone per month, by far the highest in the world. If for you your smartphone is merely an extension of your hand and you feel like a cyborg, then most of India, even in towns and many villages, has reached that stage.

Take all that together and India & IoT is not possible but inevitable. While America is still resisting Electronic Voting Machines and China had the facial recognition scheme forced on them, Indians happily stood in long lines for both Jio and Aadhaar. A slight IoT nudge from government and industry will yield spectacular results. India is as it is readying the roll out of 5G.

ICANN has partnered with NASSCOM to develop both the IoT standards and technology for India. The EU has launched an India project for IoT powered smart cities. Apart from the personal space in India, IoT target areas are utilities, healthcare, transport, manufacturing and logistics. Of course the most important is probably agriculture.

If farmers can use smartphones and other wireless devices to get information from remote central centres and get data-driven intelligence in the fields for soil and cattle monitoring, weather and environment and other real-time crop, asset and equipment management, agriculture in India can be transformed.

An IoT network that encompasses your personal space, smart cities, industry and the agriculture sector may well finally make India a developed country by the end of the next decade.