Let's try to have a healthy criticism here, both sides, starting with the article in hand. There is no denying that India is at the frontier, but at least we can maintain a basic level of sanity when it comes to quantifying by how much "India is at the forefront".
What's up with the downvotes? The journalist hasn't done the math and has blown up the numbers to increase the significance of the article. This is a real pervasive problem.
I have used the note system (with google calendar) and it worked for me in meeting deadlines(most of) and being objectively more productive. I am currently a graduate student and it has helped me to maintain good grades and complete assignments.
The trick is not to let the notes and calendar act like a "master". I usually view it as a friend who suggests things to do in a given time frame. The friend(calendar with notes) and I are symbiotic, our interests are linked.
Changing the view from an "authoritative master" to a "benevolent friend" would help. Sometimes I would discard the note and keep binging youtube video/or hackernews. Other times, I would reschedule the work for some other time. But most of the time I am able to get things done on time, without any help.
It does require some discipline, but once you get a hang of it, it becomes easy.
There are ~550M internet users in India (2019), that leaves out ~750 million unconnected users. 150M less than 0.9B.
There are other factual errors as well. Real sloppy journalism.