India, the emerging economy of contemporary times, was once known as the land of snake-charmers. Similarly, the country with poor track of digitally literate people today boasts of being a 5G hub. The paper ponders over the comprehensive affordability and feasibility of internet to the masses; the strides in digital technology; its application in governance and commercial applications; the emergence of India into a 5G hub and the future potential and challenges with respect to India in the field of digitalization. The paper briefly looks into how digitalization evolved in India over the period, particularly post- LPG.
India, given its demographic dividend, has potential market for digital expansion, offers avenues for employment in the digital sector and research and development in the arena of digitalization. India can attract foreign investments from abroad for the same. The Unified Payments Interface (UPI) for instance, is creating wonder with wide networking across all sections of the society. India’s standalone capability in the development of 5G is next only to US and China, just three months within the initiation of the 5G development programme. The digital outreach in India with its track-record of being an IT/BT/ silicon valley to emerging 5G hub is worth a serious study. The inclusive nature of the digital expansion and its penetration in all the sectors of the society, commerce and polity and the way digitalization has evolved to being an integral part of day-to-day affair of a common man’s life enables such research more interesting. The development of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI & ML) and their applications in all sectors at a rapid pace is another example of the widening digitalization.