One of the major policy focus in the recent past has been in making India digital. However, this is not an easy task. To bring things into perspective, it should be noted that the US currently holds all of India’s data in its cloud, whether personal or governmental. That is to say, if the US was to somehow secretively access all of India’s secretive and sensetive data, it could. If it were to destroy all of it, it could.
It is like staying in your house but keeping the property papers and your will in the neighbor’s house with blind belief that it will be secure come what may. Thus, before becoming a ‘digital India’, we need to be a self-sufficient India, independent India in terms of where our servers are. The major task is putting the requisite capital and administration securing a national cloud network that never fails technically.
Only if we keep all our information within the territory can we make the most of the digitization movement. The DeITy recently made its report public where it enlisted several objectives and plans. One of which was ‘Meghraj’ where the need for setting up India’s own cloud was addressed but it seems a far fetched objective as the movement to transfer data from US cloud to Indian does not seem to be gaining momentum any time soon due to lack of information of the dire consequences. Unless this basic need is addressed, the digitization movement seems hollow.