NEW DELHI: September 9, the day before the G20 summit formally began, and I had a bad toothache.
The massive briefing room on the second floor of Bharat Mandapam, or the International Media Centre at New Delhi’s Pragati Maidan, was packed to the rafters for a “pre-summit briefing” by Indian officials.
As journalists from around the world jostled for a vantage point to listen to G-20 Sherpa Amitabh Kant, Chief Coordinator Harsh Vardhan Shringla, Foreign Secretary Vinay Kwatra and Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs, Ajay Seth hold forth on the summit.
As Shringla urged journalists to visit the Digital India Experience Zone at the centre and check out the India Stack, “under which we have arranged to deliver development to the grassroots levels in India,” I wondered where I could find a strong painkiller or a doctor who could prescribe one.
Almost as if he had read my mind, I heard Shringla say: “…if any of you do fall sick or have any medical issues, please ensure that you go and connect with e-Sanjeevani, a digital platform that will have a doctor advise you immediately on the spot.”
The polite and helpful couple manning the e-Sanjeevani kiosk at the Experience Zone logged my complaint, and within seconds I was on a video consultation with a doctor sitting at the hub in Karol Bagh, some nine km across town, who then issued a prescription and advised a subsequent visit to the dentist. Instead of waiting for the medicine to be delivered, I took the prescription which popped up on my app to the small medical clinic in the next hall, and got my pill.
The entire process, including the five- or six-minute walk to find the clinic, took less than 15 minutes. And it was totally digital, transparent and free.
As the painkiller kicked in, I walked back to the Experience Zone to thank the folks manning the kiosk. Next to the e-Sanjeevani kiosk, billed as the “world’s largest telemedicine implementation in primary healthcare’, was a foreign journalist pedalling a stationary bicycle, facing a large screen which took him along winding village roads which mapped India’s digital journey.
It began with Aadhaar, the unique identification card held by over 135 crore Indians, and moved to subsequent milestones like the Unified Payments Interface or UPI and other products and services which span identification, payments, and data management and protection.
Various stalls and kiosks representing these dotted the floor. These included:
Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), which promotes open networks for exchange of goods and services over digital or electronic networks,
Digilocker, which allows you to find and store your documents ranging from college mark sheets to driver’s licence, PAN card, Aadhaar Card, and most government issued documents digitally,
Diksha, the world’s largest e-learning platform available in 36 Indian languages, which “offers engaging learning material, relevant to the prescribed school curriculum, to teachers, students and parents.”
BHASHa INterface for India, or Bhashini, an AI-driven translation platform. As Shringla explained at the briefing, “through Bhashini, you can interact with any delegate even if you don’t speak a common language. Bhashini will translate the conversation for you in real time.”
At the other end of the media centre lay the RBI’s innovation hub, which showcased cutting-edge fintech, some still in pilot phases. One of them was the central bank digital currency, which, as Shringla put it, was “designed to enable international media personnel, including those without Indian bank accounts, to receive funds in their mobile wallets,” which they could use to purchase products at India’s crafts mela at the media centre.
All these digital public infrastructure (DPI) projects are bundled under India Stack as open source products, which is “India’s gift to the world,” said an official.
Eight nations—Armenia, Sierra Leone, Suriname, Antigua, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, Papua New Guinea and Mauritius—have already signed MoUs to take the entire India Stack DPI back home, while Japan, France, the U.S., Canada, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and others have evinced interest in the Unified Payments Interface, or UPI, he added.
Back at the experience centre, there was a vending machine sized kiosk which said AskGita.Ai on top, and large picture of Krishna holding what looked like a peacock feather below it.
“The Gita is an age-old source of lifestyle management that guides us, inspires us, and transforms us for action,” declared the young man standing next to it. “AskGita.ai is an effort to guide the current generation and transform their lifestyle by using the golden message of the Gita.”
So after filling in my name, age and gender, I asked: “Explain pain.”
After a few seconds of eerie music, I had my answer.
“Pain, according to the Bhagwad Gita, is an unavoidable part of the human experience. It is simply the result of the karmic cycle, and is an inevitable consequence of our actions and desires. The Gita teaches us that we must accept pain as part of life, but also to be mindful of our actions, so as to avoid unnecessary suffering…In this way, we can learn to accept pain and suffering, while also attaining inner peace and happiness.”
Suitably enlightened, I went back to work.
Check out:
Consensus Document, African Union Inclusion: G20 Has Distinct India Imprint
G20 Outcome Document: Ukraine Spoiler But Can India Pull It Off?
[/vc_column][/vc_row][/tdc_zone]
