Digital project ensures effective governance

NEW DELHI: To bridge the ever-widening gap between government departments and people of India to ensure effective governance, make available government services to citizens electronically by minimizing paperwork and to integrate rural India under high-speed network, the government of India embarked upon the Digital India initiative.
It comprises three components: digital infrastructure, delivering services digitally and digital literacy, with a project deadline of 2019.
Digital India plans to integrate and synchronize all digital initiatives, including the national broadband plan and domestic manufacturing policy, to ensure timely execution with maximum impact for a better future.
The plan is being monitored by the prime minister’s committee on Digital India with ministers of finance, communications, rural development, human resources development and health as members.
Sharing his vision for Digital India, the prime minister in his maiden Independence Day speech had said, “When I talk of Digital India, I don’t speak of the elite. It is for the poor. You can imagine what a quality education the children in villages will get, if all the villages of India are connected with broadband connectivity and if we are able to give long distance education to schools in every remote corner of the villages. Today, information technology has the potential to connect each and every citizen of the country and that is why we want to realize the mantra of unity with the help of Digital India.”

The Digital India initiative is expected to create 17 million direct and 85 million indirect jobs, considerably reducing Indian imports of electronic goods.
The plan also envisages creation of virtual infrastructure to connect every citizen with high-speed Internet and a range of services, using a life-long digital identity along with mobile phones, bank accounts and shareable private space on a public “cloud”.
All information will be available in real time on mobile phones and online, in Indian languages.
One of the main plans is to connect two and-a-half lakh village councils likely to be completed by December 2016 with the national information infrastructure providing necessary e-governance services.
It is likely to be ready by March 2017. The plan intends ensuring universal access to mobile phones to 42,311 unconnected villages in India by June 2015.
By June-end last year, total tele-density in India was 75.8 percent with urban tele-density at 146.24 percent and rural tele-density lagging behind at 44.5 percent.
In January 2015, Idukki in Kerala became the first district in the country to be linked to the National Optic Fiber Network (NOFN), connecting eight block offices and 53 gram panchayats to the network under the ambitious plan.
The government expects to set up two semiconductor fabrication facilities during the 12th, 13th and 14th Plan periods.
The plan will create skill development centers to produce a workforce of 400,000 for electronics sector over next five years.
Through the Digital India initiative, plans aim net-zero electronics import target by 2020 through a number of moves to incentivise, promote and develop manufacturing facilities.
The incentives include a modified special incentive package scheme, tax rationalization and preferential market access,.
The initiative mentions creating five new electronic manufacturing facilities over the next five years.
An electronic development fund may be set up to create Indian intellectual property for electronic goods. Meanwhile, keeping in mind India’s poor digital literacy, the central government has embarked on a basic computer education program, Disha.
In the next three years, the Government intends not only bringing all departments across the country online but also ensuring necessary storage of certificates among others.
The electronic delivery of services, including health, education, security, justice, financial inclusion and information to farmers, termed e-kranti, aims to provide broadband connectivity to over two-and-a-half lakh schools, including free wi-fi and massive online open courses.
Meanwhile, e-health care aims to ensure access to online medical consultations, records, supplies and pan-India patient information.
Farmers will get real-time access to price information, financial help and mobile banking. The plan will include a geographic information system-based social network for citizens called MyGov.
New York-based research firm McKinsey has stated that the adoption of key technologies across various sectors spurred by the Digital India initiative could help boost India’s GDP by $550-billion to $1 trillion by 2025 and the initiative would have significant impact on technology adoption.

McKinsey is bullish over adoption of mobile Internet, cloud technology, digital payments, digital identity, Internet of Things (IoT), intelligent transportation, advanced geographic information system and next generation genomics.