Telangana at forefront of using emerging technologies: KTR

Hyderabad: Municipal Administration Minister KT Rama Rao on Friday said that Telangana has formulated an actionable technology policy frameworks for the State in emerging technology areas such as Blockchain, Drones, Artificial Intelligence, Open Data, Cyber Security, and Cloud.

The minister participated in the World Economic Forum's virtual panel session on 'Harnessing Emerging Technologies in India.' The panelists deliberated on the topic "How can emerging technologies further boost productivity, expedite the growth transition and reinforce resilience to future shocks to meet India's pressing challenges?"

The Minister talked about the steps initiated by Telangana government to leverage innovation and emerging technologies in various sectors like agriculture, healthcare and education. Minister gave an overview of the various multi-stakeholder initiatives like AI for agriculture and medicines. He informed the panelists that Telangana is investing in improving digital infrastructure via the T-Fiber project.

The minister said that due to the vast and broad spectrum of economic, social and geographical scenarios found in India, the country is well positioned to act as a global test-bed for building emerging technology-based solutions, which can be readily scaled across third world countries to achieve sustainable development goals.

Rao opined that digital readiness has been instrumental for a V-shaped economic recovery during the Covid pandemic. Conventional businesses rapidly went online across the country leveraging improving internet accessibility. The Internet has enabled access to new markets helping first movers to not only recover but thrive during the pandemic. In his concluding remarks, the minister said that underlying disparities in healthcare, education, financial stability and technology have led the COVID19 crisis to disproportionately impact certain groups and countries.

"A holistic and systems-based view is required to stress test our assumptions of the future to identify hidden chinks and build resilience to future shocks. The global health risk was one such chink which should now be an eye-opener for governments and multilateral organizations across the world," he added.

The session was moderated by Diksha Madhok and the participants included Rajan Anandan (Managing Director, Sequoia Capital), Meagan Fallone (Director, Barefoot College International) and Jai Shroff (Global CEO, UPL Ltd).