Indian Union Budget 2023-24 was presented by Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman, Union Minister of Finance and Corporate Affairs, Govt. of India, yesterday on 1st Feb. 2023, in Indian Parliament, which outlined the vision of Amrit Kaal with major thrust on Technologies like A.I. (Artificial Intelligence), 5G, Digital Tech. and Digital Services.
Analyst 5 Jewels Research (5JR) believes that provisions of Indian Budget 2023 to promote innovations in A.I., 5G, Digital Tech. and Digital Services, however it misses a most urgent and critical need of having Quantum Safe Information Security for the nation.
Commenting on the provisions of Union Budget for year 2023 presented by Govt. of India in Indian Parliament Chief Analyst of ‘5Jewels Research’ Mr Sumant Parimal said “We are happy to note that Govt. of India has provisioned resources for setting up three CoEs (Center of Excellence) for A.I., but our last year’s pre-budget outlook for giving A.I. a strategic status yet not realized fully in this year budget also. While we are hopeful that these three proposed A.I. CoEs shall propagate some strong innovations in Indian economy through A.I. Tech., but there is no large outlay assigned for large scale A.I. and Robotics Tech. adoption in India. While country has taken lead in 5G adoption, and we are happy to see provision for setting up 100 labs for developing innovative applications over 5G telecom services, which shall certainly bring higher innovation and economic value gains in many areas including logistics, supply chain, learning and education, retail, manufacturing, health care, agriculture, financial services, and other services. Further provision of other digital services like Individual and Entity DigiLocker, E-Courts Phase-3, National Digital Library, Digital Public Infrastructure for Agriculture are going to catalyze next phase of Digital India”.
“However, this year’s budget gave a critical miss to a most urgent need of having Quantum Safe Information Security for the nation, which is required for making India’s key digital assets ready to face and protect our key digital assets from any Quantum attack launched by using Quantum Computers by breaking RSA based encryptions. Recently U.S. President signed The Quantum Computing Cybersecurity Preparedness Act which provisioned budget for migration of U.S. federal government IT systems to quantum-resistant cryptography, which essentially means making IT system Quantum safe. On similar lines, India needs to also have strategy and budgetary support for migrating key Digital / IT assets to Quantum resistant cryptography on a mission mode to keep its economy safe from emerging cybersecurity challenges from Quantum Computers” said Sumant Parimal.
