Private sector should lead 'Digital India': Mohandas Pai

Bengaluru: Private sector should take the lead in the 'Digital India' programme as the government does not have the capacity to do it, said Manipal Global Education Service chairman T.V. Mohandas Pai on Thursday.

"I would like the private sector to do it, because government does not have the capability to do it. Private sector has to get involved, government should not run data centres because things are in the cloud, they cannot do the e-governance projects because it will take too much of time and expensive," said Pai in the panel discussion Diconomy at the CeBIT here.

Seconding Pai's views, Ajay Kumar, additional secretary, in the electronics and IT department said: "Government is about processes and standardization, it is limited. Traditionally, government does not allow creativity and disruption."

He emphasized India should go a long way in innovation and called for major reforms in the institutional framework while appealing to students to pursue higher education like post graduate courses and PhDs.

Calling on the citizenry, private sector and everybody to ask for the data they need from the government, he said: "India is in the list of the top 10 nations with open databases.. 17,000 databases have been opened to the public."

Highlighting that colossal amounts of data will be created with the emergence of Digital India, SAP Labs India MD Dilip Khandelwal said: "Tons and tons of data will be generated.. where is the system to collect and slice and analyse all this data for decisions."