The Digital India mission, launched on 1 July 2015, was envisioned with the aim to digitally-
empower the people of the country.The mission, flagged off by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, aimed to bridge the digital gap and attract foreign investments in India.It ensures that all citizens will have electronic access to government services. The mission also seeks to provide high speed internet services to the citizens. It also has business-related services like ease of doing business. Digital India is aimed at transforming the country into a digitally empowered society and a knowledge economy.The Narendra Modi government embarked on the ambitious programme to bridge India’s digital divide, connect thousands of villages to the Internet and create millions of jobs. The programme is centred around three key areas: digital infrastructure for all the citizens of India; emphasis on taking governance to people digitally and providing services online; and the overall digital empowerment of the people.Providing free WiFi in trains and at railway stations also comes within the purview of Digital India. The initiative, which lays emphasis on e-governance, has a projected budget of Rs 1,13,000 crore – an amount that will be implemented to prepare the country for knowledge-based transformation.
While a broader dimension to e-governance was imparted in the mid-90s, the Modi government realised their inadequacy and loopholes in implementation and launched the programme in order to transform the entire ecosystem of public services through the use of information and technology. The Digital India programme is, therefore, a campaign cutting across ministries and realms and is in continuum with several other initiatives such as Skill India.
One of the success stories from the government’s side has been the creation of the umbrella digital platform “MyGov”. It was designed to become an interface between the people and the government.
The Modi regime plans to take high-speed Internet to 2.5 lakh villages- one in every panchayat- by March 2017 by laying a network of optic fibre cables, and 1.5 lakh post offices in the next two years. These post offices are to become Multi-Service Centres for people. Several services would be delivered online, through e-governance, via payment gateways and mobile platforms. Such things as school/college certificates, voter ID cards etc would be provided online.
The government aims to train nearly 1 crore students from small towns and villages for the IT sector by 2020, along with strengthening BPOs in northeastern states. Through ‘e-Kranti’ such services as in the realm of health, education, farmers, justice, security and financial inclusion would be provided. Under the initiative WiFi facilities would be set up in all varsities across India.
As Narendra Modi-led NDA government completes two years in power, here are some of the most important milestones under the Digital India mission:
1. The Digital India initiative boasts a new scheme, called the DigiLocker. The virtual locker, a cloud-based platform where one can securely store digital files, is operated by Department of Electronics & Information Technology (DeitY). So far, the DigiLocker has fetched 18,98,358 registered users with 23,36,825 uploaded documents.
2. The Digital India also includes the ambitious Smart Cities scheme, which will help to convert 100 cities across the country into smart cities. The government has allocated Rs 70.6 billion (US $1.2 billion) for Smart Cities in Budget 2014-15. A few smart cities are currently in the development stage – including Kochi Smart City, Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT) in Ahmedabad, Naya Raipur in Chhattisgarh, Lavasa in Maharashtra and Wave Infratech’s 4,500-acre smart city near New Delhi.
3. Google has partnered with the Indian Railways to provide free wifi services at 100 major railway stations. So far, Mumbai, Bhuwaneshwar, Ujjain, Jaipur, Patna among other cities have been covered. RailTel, a PSU which owns a Pan-India optic fiber network exclusively on railway track, has laid out over 45,000 kms of optic fibre networks across the country, which Google will utilise for its Wi-Fi.
4. The smart cities project which is possible only through the digital revolution is set to create a 10-15% rise in employment.
(Siddharth Singh is a student of Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi)