IoT- India of Tomorrow

“Being a neutral body we feel we are a credible voice to tell people it is not for our personal interest but for everybody interest…”

 IoT is India’s future. Internet of things is the strategy to gain progress and make country smart, and it can be anything, a system of interrelated computing devices, mechanical and digital machines, objects, animals or people, so when everything will be connected it will make world even smaller and manageable. To address the vast opportunities in IoT, the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) has called upon an IoT panel. In an interview Dr. Rishi Bhatnagar, Chairperson IET IoT Panel and President, India Operations, Aeris India, talked to DQ Channels about what’s IET IoT panel is doing for future.

What is the agenda of IET IoT panel?

IET is 143 years old institution for engineers. As a neutral body, it’s no profit kind. We are trying to see how can we bring industries together and see how we can prepare India for the revolution coming called IoT, how we can utilise it for skill development, how we can see what the industry; what government; what academia should be doing and let people know what IoT is. Being a neutral body we feel we are a credible voice to tell people it is not for our personal interest, but for everybody’s interest to bring volunteers on both and let the world know what revolution is coming and let’s prepare for it.

There are a number of issues to be worked on, name three major issues which should be addressed immediately?

There are multiple issues, but I personally feel that while people are talking about connectivity and about standards, I will mention only two things, I feel that people are not talking about and working on it, first is on the skill requirement and second is legal law. When Internet of Things happens, we are trying to combine 4 industries, for e.g. I am wearing a device, this device is getting connected to a communication channel to a centralised location to a data centre, that data centre and solution centre are managed by an IT company and then you have an industry, so instead of a device the connectivity provider, the operator, IP address provider the solution development provider and 4^th is the health care industry, when 4 of them combine together need a different kind of regulatory requirement, which we don’t have. For instance, if a driverless car hit a person whom are you going to find, who will go to jail, as it is a driverless car. We have to start thinking about those cases that are not in existence. The legal law has to happen in that case. And the second thing is to develop those solutions, as there are skilled people, who will understand there is manufacturing of device connectivity in 4 different industries and trying to curb into one solution. So you need people who are skilled. And there will be legal issues, for which new laws are to be developed and the second thing is that for skilled people, these are two areas I believe not much is happening. We are small IT organisation trying to educate and develop.

IET IoT panel has started a credit program, tell us more about it?

We have launched our first credit course. There is one university in Chennai, for which we have created a one credit course for IoT, they are doing it with second year B. Tech students and we have identified around 30 students, with which we are taking 60 hrs kind of course, this include classroom and lab sessions. And it is to improve skill set knowledge in the students, it is first credit programme, we are looking forward to expanding it, as we are planning to talk to HRD Ministry and more job creating opportunities will be there.