Digitalization in India: The Class Agenda

Bill Gates, Nandan Nilekani, the IMF, the World Bank, and the World Economic Forum are all agreed: India’s digitalization process is transformational. Digitalization saves the Indian government money, ensures the poor get their payments, enables healthcare, spreads education, empowers the once excluded, raises productivity, and turbo-charges consumption. Indeed, it sets a blueprint for other countries to follow.

Digitalization in India refutes such magical thinking and looks at the actual process of digitalization in India: its effects on growth, employment, welfare, healthcare, education, urban planning, financial services, and agriculture. It finds that, while digitalization fails to deliver its promises of greater prosperity, well-being, and inclusion, it succeeds abundantly in tightening the grip of corporations over various sectors of the economy, and the grip of global tech giants over India.

As a case study in what awaits the United States and other countries, Digitalization in India is a warning and wake up call for democracies everywhere.