Aadhaar biometrics set India on a more digitally inclusive path, says NEC official

A senior official of NEC Corporation India has highlighted the substantial benefits which Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven technologies are bringing to India’s economy as the country plans to become a trillion-dollar digital economy by the year 2030.

In a write-up published by The Times of India, Deepak Jha, General Manager of the Artificial Intelligence Platform of NEC Corporation India, takes a generic look at how technology is helping transform various sectors of the country especially as internet coverage is projected to reach 900 million Indians by 2025, up from the 622 million as of last year.

Jha refers to the implementation of the Aadhaar biometric ID project as the starting point of India’s journey toward digital inclusion. Beyond digital ID, Jha opines in the article that the adoption of emerging technologies such as AI, Internet of Things (IoT) and Big Data “is paving the way for a more digitally inclusive society that ensures employment, independence, and overall well-being of people from different strata of society without any bias.”

According to the NEC Corporation India official, this trend has also been boosted by some of the Indian government’s policies, notably the putting in place of an initiative to coordinate issues around AI.

He specifically cites the launch, in 2018, by the government, of a National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence (NSAI) dubbed “AI for All”, which blends the economic potential of AI with social development and inclusive growth and which sets India on the pedestal of being the world’s AI reference point.

Jha makes a quick tour around some of the areas and sectors where AI is being used or can be explored to make life easier and worthwhile for users of tech in India.

He notes that apart from transforming cities into smart cities, AI-based systems can be used as a resource for learning a variety of local Indian languages, improve agricultural processes and multiply yields, analyze and tackle tax evasion and fraud problems, ensure seamless exchange of information for crime investigation purposes, and ensure community hygiene by checking the state of toilets for instance.

The Khoya-Paya system for helping to reunite missing children with their families could benefit from adopting face biometrics, Jha suggests, which is part of the government’s longer-term plans.

In the banking and financial services sector, Jha explains that AI-driven solutions are used to boost or improve customer experience, risk reduction for institutional and retail investors, personalized financial management advice as well as for smart analysis tools to quickly identity fraud and money-laundering operations, indirectly referencing to digital ID technologies and biometrics.

He also mentions the various uses and advantages of the use of AI-driven solutions in the industrial and healthcare sectors, while affirming that AI has the potential to allow India the possibility to “leverage its unique strengths of technology, data volume, data diversity, and talent to build a digitally inclusive society in the truest sense.”

Article Topics

Aadhaar  |  AI  |  biometrics  |  digital identity  |  digital inclusion  |  government services  |  Identification for Development (ID4D)  |  India  |  national ID  |  NEC Technologies India