India is known worldwide as the powerhouse of the technology brain, but even then the fruit
The Indian citizens hope
for a brighter future, with a decent standard of living. To meet these
aspirations, the country needs broad-based economic growth and more effective
public services. Technology can play an important role in enabling the growth
India needs. The spread of digital technologies, as well as advances in energy
and genomics, can raise the productivity of business and agriculture, redefine how
services such as healthcare, Banking and Education are delivered, and
contribute to higher living standards for millions of Indians.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the much ambitious 1 lakh crore ‘Digital India’ programme on
July 1, 2015 at the Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium in the national
capital. The best part of this initiative being it will also connect rural
regions and remote villages ensuring that they too have high-speed Internet
services. The project is expected to be completed by 2019. The programme has been envisaged by the department of Electronics and
Information Technology, Govt. of India(DeitY).
The vision of Digital
India aims to transform the country into a digitally empowered society and knowledgeable economy. The Digital India
is transformational in nature and would ensure that Government services are
available to citizens electronically. It will also bring in public
accountability through mandated delivery of government’s services electronically,
a unique ID and e-Pramaan based on authentic and standard based interoperable
and integrated government applications and data basis.
Hon’ble Primie Minister has made clewar 10
visionary points regarding ditital
India. They are -
1. “E-governance is going to change to
M-Governance soon. 'M' is not for 'Modi', but 'Mobile'.
2. Make in India is important but 'Design in India'
equally important for digital India. We need to create products in different
languages and age group. It is a market of 125 crore people.
3. Digital India will enable investment of Rs. 4.5
lakh crore and ensure jobs for 18 lakh people.
4. Like bank lockers, there will be digital godowns
where we will keep all our important documents.
5. Now people will settle down only at places with an
optical fibre network.
6. Even a child understands digital power. Earlier, a
child used to playfully wrench your reading glasses. Today, he reaches for your
phone.
7. I dream of digital India where the world looks to
India for the next big Idea.
8. I dream of a digital India where high-speed digital
highways unite the nation, where 1.2 billion connected Indians drive
innovation.
9. Can we secure the world from the bloodless
war? I'm talking about Cyber security. India must take the lead in cyber
security through innovation.
10. India has about 25 crore internet users. But the
people who are still not using internet are more than anywhere else.”[1]
Digital
India aims to provide the much needed
thrust to basic nine requirements
of national growth such as –
i)
Broadband Highways
ii)
Universal access to mobile connectivity
iii)
Public Internet access programme
iv)
E-governance
v)
E-Kranti that is electronic delivery of services
vi)
Information for all
vii)
Electronics manufacturing
viii)
Early harvest programmes
ix)
It for jobs etc.
The plan of digital India may
really ensure the growth and development in India especially in the rural areas
by connecting rural regions and remote villages with high-speed internet
services. The overall project monitoring will be under the Prime Minister
himself. Citizens of digital India may improve their knowledge and skill level
after getting covered under the umbrella of internet. It is an ambitious
project will benefit everyone especially villagers who travel long distance and
waste time and money in doing paper works for various reasons.
In line with these objectives, the government has
launched some inititaives. Such as-
1. Digital
Locker System- This aims to minimize the usage of physical
documents and enable sharing of e-documents across agencies. The sharing of the
e-documents will be done through registered repositories thereby ensuring the
authenticity of the documents online, says the government.
2. MyGov.in has
been implemented as a platform for citizen engagement in governance, through a
"Discuss", "Do" and "Disseminate" approach. The
mobile app for MyGov would bring these features to users on a mobile phone.
3. Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) Mobile app would be
used by people and Government organizations for achieving the goals of Swachh
Bharat Mission.
4. e-Sign framework would allow citizens to
digitally sign a document online using Aadhaar authentication.
5. The Online Registration System (ORS) under the e-Hospital
application has been introduced. This application provides important services
such as online registration, payment of fees and appointment, online diagnostic
reports, enquiring availability of blood online etc, the government claims.
6. National Scholarships Portal is said to be a one
stop solution for end to end scholarship process right from submission of
student application, verification, sanction and disbursal to end beneficiary
for all the scholarships provided by the Government of India.
7. DeitY has undertaken an initiative namely
Digitize India Platform (DIP) for large scale digitization of records in the
country that would facilitate efficient delivery of services to the citizens.
8. The
Government of India has undertaken an initiative namely Bharat Net, a high
speed digital highway to connect all 2.5 lakh Gram Panchayats of country. This
would be the world's largest rural broadband connectivity project using optical
fibre.
9. Policy initiatives have also been undertaken by DeitY in the e-Governance
domain like e-Kranti Framework, Policy on Adoption of Open Source Software for
Government of India, Framework for Adoption of Open Source Software in
e-Governance Systems, Policy on Open Application Programming Interfaces (APIs)
for Government of India, E-mail Policy of Government of India, Policy on Use of
IT Resources of Government of India, Policy on Collaborative Application
Development by Opening the Source Code of Government Applications, Application
Development & Re-Engineering Guidelines for Cloud Ready Applications
10. BSNL has introduced Next Generation Network
(NGN), to replace 30 year old exchanges, which is an IP based technology to
manage all types of services like voice, data, multimedia/ video and other
types of packet switched communication services.
11. BSNL has undertaken large scale deployment of
Wi-Fi hotspots throughout the country. The user can latch on the BSNL Wi-Fi
network through their mobile devices.
12. BPO Policy has been approved to create BPO
centres in different North Eastern states and also in smaller / mofussil towns
of other states.
13. Electronics Development Fund (EDF) Policy aims
to promote Innovation, R&D, and Product Development and to create a
resource pool of IP within the country to create a self-sustaining eco-system
of Venture Funds.
14. National Centre for Flexible Electronics
(NCFlexE) is an initiative of Government of India to promote research and
innovation in the emerging area of Flexible Electronics.
15. Centre of Excellence on Internet on Things
(IoT) is a joint initiative of Department of Electronics & Information
Technology (DeitY), ERNET and NASSCOM.
"The estimated impact of Digital India by 2019
would be cross cutting, ranging from broadband connectivity in all Panchayats,
Wi-fi in schools and universities and Public Wi-Fihotspots. The programme will
generate huge number of IT, Telecom and Electronics jobs, both directly and
indirectly. Success of this programme will make India Digitally empowered and
the leader in usage of IT in delivery of services related to various domains
such as health, education, agriculture, banking, etc," the government
claims.[2]
Thus if actually materializes even to some
appreciable extent of the dream project; India may as well see itself alongside
some top ranking digitally developed country of the world like Japan, USA,
Russia etc. How soon and how far will be the questions in everybody’s mind.
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