Technology Driven Economy

Where digital payments had very rarely been in the policy makers books, only in the 12th month of Bitcoin it was amongst the prime concerns to be discussed in the bi-monthly meeting of the RBI. Though might not have been positively welcomed by the decision makers, but still made the headlines for long. Such is the impact of technology on our society and infact has magnifying effects on the overall economy.

E-commerce giants like Flipkart and Amazon have turned from emerging business concepts to benchmarks for performance and profitability for certain industries. With such changes in business and trade, it has brought the regulatory to task and made innovation and updation of rules an inevitable function, because if technology catalyses business it also makes strategising through the loopholes easier. A recent example can be linking the payment wallets with our Adhaar Card numbers. Just to share an observation, next time you have to make some payment with credit card, try using a e-wallet instead by transferring the amount using your credit card to the wallet and then making the payment, and you would have saved on the credit card charges smartly. Perhaps these are some examples where technology has galvanized operations.

Reading through some articles, I came across a strange fact that CPI and WPI inflation indices do not consider the price hike caused by the goods offered over the e-commerce portals. Though online marketplace has brought about a paradigm shift in sales of high unit value products and has expanded its market significantly, but still these sales go unrecorded on the sovereign bills. We might be flabbergasted with the technological advancement developed nations bring, but we fail to realise that these developments are all tailor made to suit their circumstances. Projects like hyperloop may seem exciting and indicate growth, but is a misfit for our economic condition. Given the pace at which technology is developing, projects like hyperloop will be obsolete by the time they are able recover their costs. Similarly the concept of driver-less cars is like a sheet of thorns synthetically covered with a flowery bed. Roads might look stylish and rich, but the drivers would get unemployed. In a country with a large informal sector, technological advancement is both a boon and a bane. In a country where agriculture drives the GDP and employment, technology has limits to its application. Irrespective of how much funds are transacted intraday digitally, the farmer still gets cash for his crops.