Digital India, a flagship initiative that was launched with a vision to transform India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy, has completed six years of its journey since its launch on 1 July, 2015.
Interacting with the beneficiaries of various Digital India initiatives across the country in June 2018, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said that Digital India was launched to ensure that people from all walks of life, especially those from rural areas, are digitally empowered. The prime minister had said that technology has brought about ease of living and the government’s efforts are to ensure that the advantages of technology were available to all sections of society.
What is Digital India?
Digital India is a Rs 1,13,000-crore flagship programme of the Government of India with a vision to transform India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy.Since the mid-1990s, the e-governance initiatives in India took a broader dimension with an emphasis on citizen-centric services.Among the major focus of e-governance was railway computerisation, land record computerisation, etc, which then slowly percolated to the states to include other facets of governance within the digital purview.
However, there were bottlenecks as the desired impact was not achieved due to limited resources. There was a clear need for more comprehensive planning and implementation and to get in place the infrastructure needed to establish a more connected government.
What is e-Kranti?
The National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) was initiated in 2006 with 31 Mission Mode Projects on agriculture, land records, health, education, passports, police, courts, municipalities, commercial taxes and treasuries among others.While 24 Mission Mode Projects have been implemented and started delivering either a full or partial range of envisaged services.The portfolio of Mission Mode Projects has increased from 31 to 44 and many new social sector projects like Women and Child Development, Social Benefits, Financial Inclusion, Urban Governance eBhasha among others were added as new MMPs under e-Kranti.
However, a lack of integration among government applications and databases was soon detected and the need to embrace emerging technologies like mobile and cloud was immediately felt. Thus the e-Kranti programme was revamped with a vision of “Transforming e-Governance for Transforming Governance” with the following mantras in mind:
Transformation and not TranslationIntegrated Services and not Individual ServicesGovernment Process Reengineering (GPR) to be mandatory in every MMPICT infrastructure on demandCloud by defaultMobile firstFast tracking approvalsMandating standards and protocolsLanguage localisationNational GIS (Geo-Spatial Information System)Security and Electronic Data Preservation
What are the vision areas of Digital India?
The Digital India programme is centred on three key vision areas. They are:
A. Digital Infrastructure as a Core Utility to Every Citizen
Only after the remotest of the Indian villages are digitally connected through broadband and high-speed internet, the delivery of electronic government services to every citizen, targeted social benefits, and financial inclusion can be achieved in reality. Unless there is high-speed internet and cyberspace is safe and secure even for the digitally-reluctant individual, then only the true success of Digital India can be measured. The following ingredients are key for the programme to be successful:
Availability of high-speed internet as a core utility for delivery of services to citizensCradle to grave digital identity that is unique, lifelong, online and authenticable to every citizenMobile phone and bank account enabling citizen participation in digital and financial spaceEasy access to a Common Service CentreShareable private space on a public cloudSafe and secure cyberspace
B. Governance and Services on demand
The ultimate objective was to make all government services accessible to the common man in the locality itself through common service delivery outlets. The idea was to ensure efficiency, transparency, and reliability of such services at affordable costs to realise the basic needs of the common man. Six elements were introduced to ensure governance and services are available to all citizens in the country.
Seamlessly integrated services across departments or jurisdictionsAvailability of services in real-time from online and mobile platformsAll citizen entitlements to be portable and available on the cloudDigitally transformed services for improving ease of doing businessMaking financial transactions electronic and cashlessLeveraging Geospatial Information Systems (GIS) for decision support systems and development
C. Digital empowerment of citizens
The Digital India programme seeks to transform India into a digitally empowered society by focusing on digital literacy, digital resources, and collaborative digital platforms. For these the following points are necessary to cover:
Universal digital literacyUniversally accessible digital resourcesAvailability of digital resources/services in Indian languagesCollaborative digital platforms for participative governanceCitizens not required to physically submit government documents/certificates
What are the challenges for Digital India?
With a programme of this magnitude, challenges are part of the path on every front from man to machine. Among the key challenges are:
Ensuring last mile connectivity: Internet connectivity is a huge issue particularly in far-flung areas of the North East or in the Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh. Although the issue has been addressed to a large extent, there are still many areas where a proper internet connection is still a luxury.Digital Illiteracy: Digital illiteracy is still high in the country which became very apparent during the ongoing COVID-19 vaccination programme. The government was forced to make offline arrangements as many people were not digitally literate enough to get themselves registered on the Cowin app for scheduling jab appointments.High rate of cybercrime: With people still learning to protect themselves against cyber frauds, there is another section that is looking to steal data through dishonest means.Inequality in digitisation: As many processes and departments remain to be completely digitised, there is a huge gap developing among departments. Moreover, the different levels of orientation among employees to embrace digital technology is also another obstacle to surmount.
What are the achievements of Digital India in the last six years?
There are many feathers in the cap of Digital India since its inception which are briefly mentioned here:
India’s rise in the UN eGovernance Index since 2014Creation of Aadhaar database which is the world’s largest biometric-based digital identityBharatNet, to connect 250,00 Gram PanchayatsNational Knowledge Network is a state-of-art network and a revolutionary step towards creating a knowledge society without boundariesMeghraj, to utilise and harness the benefits of cloud computingCreating digital entrepreneurs in small towns and villagesBPO Promotion Scheme for promotion of BPO/ITES operations across the countryGrowth in mobile phone manufacturingGrowth in electronics manufacturingLaunch if Electronics Development Fund in February 2016 with a corpus of $0.32 billionThird largest Start-up EcosystemNational Soil Health Card scheme was launched in February 2015Pradhan Mantri Gramin Digital Saksharata Abhiyan for making 60million candidates digitally literate in two yearsSwayam free online courses from school education to post-graduate educationBHIM App incentivemyGOV, which is the world’s largest digital democracy platform