Technology integration to help fight poverty: Kant

Technology integration will yield innovative solutions to India's unique challenges and help the country uplift 10 crore people out of poverty, NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant said today.
"Great advantage for India is that there is no country in the world that has a billion mobiles, a billion biometrics, which is spearheading a big change through bank accounts which will actually reduce the cost of transaction so radically that it will enable us to uplift about 100 million people above the poverty line," he said at an industry event here.
Asserting that the challenge to find solutions to India's unique problems must innovate from the country only, Kant said that once it is done, the total factor productivity will rise and the country will see its economic growth rising to 10 per cent.

India must become the most disruptive society to find solutions for its unique challenges. This will mean finding solutions to nations in the African continent facing similar challenges as India does, Kant added.
"I think India will actually have to find solution for the next 6 billion people of this world. So finding a solution to India is actually finding solutions to Africa, several parts of the world which are looking for innovations and therefore India must become a great innovator," Kant said.
The challenge for India is to find solutions for unique problems of its 1 billion people, where problems are very unique, he said.

Kant said the gap between India's current growth rate of over 7.5 per cent and the aspiration of achieving a level of 10 per cent can be filled by finding innovative solutions.

"The challenge is that we need to spread that ecosystem to our schools, our colleges and to our IITs and to our IIMs and to convert each of them into great entrepreneurs for India," the CEO said.
He further said there is a need to create a sense of pride towards innovation and entrepreneurship and the key thing required to do this is to re-engineer the education system.

NITI Aayog will help create 500 Tinkering Labs in schools this year as the world of manufacturing is completely altering and getting more and more technology driven, he added.