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Digital India

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Digital India
MottoPower To Empower
CountryIndia
Prime Minister(s)Narendra Modi
Ministry
Key people
Launched1 July 2015; 9 years ago (2015-07-01)
StatusActive
Websitedigitalindia.gov.in

Digital India is a campaign launched by the Government of India to make its services available to citizens electronically via improved online infrastructure and by increasing Internet connectivity.[1][2] The initiative includes plans to connect rural areas with high-speed internet networks. It consists of three core components: the development of secure and stable digital infrastructure, delivering government services digitally, and universal digital literacy.

Launched on 1 July 2015, by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, it both uses and supports other Government of India schemes, such as BharatNet, Make in India, Startup India, Standup India, industrial corridors, Bharatmala Sagarmala and Amrit Bharat Station Scheme, Atmanirbhar Bharat.

While India has seen an increase in internet users in recent years,[3][4] frequent data breaches have raised concerns over the effectiveness of the Digital India campaign.[5][6]

History

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Digital India was launched by the Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi on 1 July 2015, with an objective of connecting rural areas with high-speed Internet networks and improving digital literacy.[7][8][9] The Digital India program aimed to promote inclusive growth in the areas of electronic services, products, manufacturing and job opportunities. It is centered on three key areas – digital infrastructure as a utility to every citizen, governance and services on demand, and digital empowerment of citizens.[10] The plan also attempted to expand access to the internet in rural areas through the implementation of the Netcare System program.

Digital India initiative

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The Government of India's entity Bharat Broadband Network Limited (BBNL) which executes the BharatNet project is the custodian of Digital India[11] (DI) project.[12][13]

New digital services

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Some of the facilities which will be provided through this initiative are Bharat, digital locker, e-education, e-health, e-sign, e-shopping and the National Scholarship Portal. As part of Digital India, Indian Government planned to launch Botnet cleaning centers.[14][15]

  • National e-Governance Plan aimed at bringing all the front-end government services online.
  • MyGov.in is a platform to share inputs and ideas on matters of policy and governance.[16] It is a platform for citizen engagement in governance, through a "Discuss", "Do" and "Disseminate" approach.[9]
    • UMANG (Unified Mobile Application for New-age Governance) is a Government of India all-in-one single unified secure multi-channel multi-platform multi-lingual multi-service freeware mobile app for accessing over 1,200 central and state government services in multiple Indian languages over Android, iOS, Windows and USSD (feature phone) devices, including services such as AADHAAR, DigiLocker, Bharat Bill Payment System, PAN EPFO services, PMKVY services, AICTE, CBSE, tax and fee or utilities bills payments, education, job search, tax, business, health, agriculture, travel, Indian railway tickets bookings, birth certificates, e-District, e-Panchayat, police clearance, passport, other utility services from private companies and much more.[17]
    • eSign framework allows citizens to digitally sign a document online using Aadhaar authentication.[9]
    • Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) Mobile app is being used by people and Government organizations for achieving the goals of Swachh Bharat Mission.[9]
    • e-Hospital application provides important services such as online registration, payment of fees and appointment, online diagnostic reports, enquiring availability of blood online, etc.[18][19]
    • Digital attendance: attendance.gov.in was launched by PM Narendra Modi on 1 July 2015,[7] to keep a record of the attendance of Government employees on a real-time basis.[20] This initiative started with implementation of a common Biometric Attendance System (BAS) in the central Government offices located in Delhi.[21]
  • Back-end digitization
    • Black money eradication: The 2016 Union budget of India announced eleven technology initiatives including the use of data analytics to prevent tax evasion.[22] Digital Literacy mission will cover six crore rural households.[22] It was planned to connect 550 farmer markets in the country through the use of technology.[23]
  • Facilities to digitally empower citizens
    • Digital Locker facility aims to help citizens to digitally store their important documents like PAN card, Passport, mark sheets, driving licence, Aadhaar card, and degree certificates. Digital Locker will provide secure access to Government-issued documents. It uses authentication services provided by Aadhaar, and is designed to eliminating the use of physical documents and enable the sharing of verified electronic documents across Government agencies. Three key stakeholders of DigiLocker are Citizen, Issuer and requester.[9][24][25]
    • BPO and job growth: The government planned to create 28,000 seats of BPOs in various states and set up at least one Common Service Centre in each of the gram panchayats in the state.[26]
    • e-Sampark Vernacular email service: Out of 10% English speaking Indians, only 2% reside in rural areas. Rest everyone depends on their vernacular language for all living their lives. However, as of now, email addresses can only be created in the English language. To connect rural India with Digital India, the Government of India impelled email services providers including Google, Microsoft, and Rediff to provide the email address in regional languages.[27] An Indian-based company, Data Xgen Technologies Pvt Ltd, has launched world's first free linguistic email address under the name ‘DATAMAIL’[28] which allows creating email ids in 8 Indian languages, English; and three foreign languages – Arabic, Russian and Chinese. Over the period of time, the email service in 22 languages will be offered by Data XGen Technologies.[29]
    • The India Business Promotion Scheme (IBPS), was designed to stimulate the growth of the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and Information Technology Enabled Services (ITES) sector nationally, with a budget of Rs. 493 Crore.[30][31][32]

Training

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PMGDisha logo

Pradhan Mantri Gramin Digital Saksharta Abhiyan was executed by PMGDisha with an outlay of Rs 2,351.38 crore with the objective of making 6 crore rural households digitally literate by March 2020.[33][34][35] Pradhan Mantri Gramin Digital Saksharta Abhiyan (abbreviated as PMGDisha[36]) is an initiative under Digital India program, approved by The Union Cabinet chaired by the PM Narendra Modi.[37][38] The main objective of the Pradhan Mantri Gramin Digital Saksharta Abhiyan was to make 6 crore people in rural areas across India digitally literate, reaching around 40% of rural households by covering one member from every eligible household.[39][40][41]

Annual Digital India Summit & Awards were held in 2016.[42]

E-Cabinet

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In 2014 the Andhra Pradesh government led by Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu and his Council of Ministers held the first paperless e-Cabinet meeting in the country using the app e-Cabinet.[43] The ministers accessed the agenda of the Cabinet meeting in electronic form by logging into the app on their laptops or Tabs.[44]

E-Pragati

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E-Pragati, the Andhra Pradesh State Enterprise Architecture, is a framework designed to provide 750 services to over 30 million citizens by integrating 34 departments on a single platform.[45]

Bhudhaar

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Bhudhaar is a 2018 E-Governance project that is intended to assign an 11-digit unique number[46] to every land parcel in the state of Andhra Pradesh,[47] as part of the "land hub in E-Pragati programme".[48] Bhuseva Authority, an inter-departmental committee was formed to implement and monitor its progress.[49] Eventually all land related transactions are planned to use Bhudhaar as a single source of truth to reduces land related disputes. On 20 Februarly 2019, Andhra pradesh Assembly gave its consent to the legal usage of Bhudhaar Number in land documents.

e-Panta (crop booking)

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Electronic crop booking (e- Crop booking) is an Android application launched with an Andhra Pradesh company e-Panta, to assess crop details and to analyse the crop pattern across Andhra Pradesh state and to capture the standing crop in the state.[50] Photographs as evidence in the case of crop damage and insurance are also available as the arable land in the state has been captured in latitude and longitude along with subdivision and occupancy. Field officers are trained to capture the crop details in the existing agricultural fields using tabs and to upload the crop details to the server for every crop season.[51] The features include an online transfer of crop details to Webland (land record management website), evidence in the case of crop damage for insurance, evidence for crop loans by banks, crop pattern and water tax demand analysis, and GPS location of each land parcel across the state. The mobile app covers land use and the entire Pattadar's history of land cover.[52]

Loan charge

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Loan charge creation project of Government of Andhra Pradesh was initially developed in India to curtail bogus and multiple loans issued to farmers.[53] By using this module, bankers can verify the land details in adangal and ROR‐1B copies and also know whether any loan is taken on the same land. The financial institutions like banks, Primary Agricultural Cooperative Societies (PACS) and Sub Registrar offices of Registration Department in Andhra Pradesh are covered under the application. Nearly 78 lakhs of farmers, 2.25 crores people of the State are covered under the project along with 61 Major Banks, PACS and District Cooperative Central Bank (DCCBs) having 6000 branches are using this application to deliver the loans and for creating charges on the land.[54]

Outcomes

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Reception

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The tableau of Ministry of Communications and Electronics and Information Technology passes through the Rajpath at the 72nd Republic Day Celebrations, in New Delhi on January 26, 2021.

In 2017 the government of Vietnam opened discussions with the government of India on emulating its use of cybersecurity and egovernance.[55]

At the launch ceremony of Digital India Week by Prime Minister Modi in Delhi on 1 July 2015, CEOs from India and abroad committed to invest ₹224.5 lakh crore (US$2.7 trillion) towards the initiative.[56] The CEOs said the investments would be utilized towards making smartphones and internet devices at an affordable price in India which would help generate jobs in India as well as reduce the cost of importing them from abroad.[57]

Leaders from Silicon Valley, San Jose, California expressed their support for Digital India during Modi's visit in September 2015. Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg changed his profile picture in support of Digital India and started a chain on Facebook and promised to work on WiFi Hotspots in rural area of India.[58] Google committed to provide broadband connectivity on 500 railway stations in India. Microsoft agreed to provide broadband connectivity to five hundred thousand villages in India and make India its cloud hub through Indian data centres. Qualcomm announced an investment of US$150 million in Indian startups.[59] Oracle plans to invest in 20 states and will work on payments and Smart city initiatives.[60] However, back in India, cyber experts expressed their concern over internet.org and viewed the Prime Minister's bonhomie with Zuckerberg as the government's indirect approval of the controversial initiative.[61] The Statesman reported, "Prime Minister Narendra Modi's chemistry with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the social media giant's headquarters in California may have been greeted enthusiastically in Silicon Valley but back home several social media enthusiasts and cyber activists are disappointed."[62] Later the Prime Minister office clarified that net neutrality will be maintained at all costs and vetoed the Basic Internet plans.[61] Digital India has also been influential in promoting the interests of the Indian Railways.[63]

The number of Indian internet subscribers grew to over 500 million by April 2017.[64] On 28 December 2015, Panchkula district of Haryana was awarded for being the top-performing district in the state under the Digital India campaign.[65] As of 2018, India was adding 10 million daily internet users a month, which at the time was the highest rate of rate of internet-adoption recorded anywhere in the world.[66]

Criticisms

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Several academic scholars have critiqued ICTs in development. Some take issue with technological determinism, the notion that ICTs are a sure-fire antidote to the world's problems.[67] Instead, governments must adjust solutions to the specific political and social context of their nation.[67] Others note that technology amplifies underlying institutional forces, so technology must be accompanied by significant changes in policy and institutions in order to have meaningful impact.[68][69]

It is being thought that there needs to be more research on the actual worth of these multimillion-dollar government and ICT for development projects. For the most part, the technological revolution in India has benefited the already privileged sectors of Indians.[67] It is also difficult to scale up initiatives to affect all Indians, and fundamental attitudinal and institutional change is still an issue.[70] While much ICT research has been conducted in Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, and Gujarat, poorer states such as Bihar and Odisha are rarely mentioned.[70]

Digital India as a programme has been considered by some as a continuation of the long history of bias towards RIL, which has previously manifested in the form of altering TRAI regulations in favour of the company. Reliance Jio has cited the Digital India initiative numerous times for its own marketing purposes.[71]

The government has faced criticism over frequent data breaches.[5][6] The Aadhaar biometrics have been criticised for being an easy target for hackers.[72]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ Prakash, Amit. "Digital India needs to go local". The Hindu. Retrieved 26 February 2017.
  2. ^ Mannathukkaren, Nissim. "The grand delusion of Digital India". The Hindu. Retrieved 26 February 2017.
  3. ^ Govt will soon make Aadhaar-driving licence linking mandatory: Mr. Ravi Shankar Prasad, Indian Express, 7 Jan 2019.
  4. ^ "The Internet and Mobile Association of India". www.iamai.in. Archived from the original on 27 June 2018. Retrieved 3 May 2018.
  5. ^ a b "Data Breach: Unveiling the Cracks in Digital India". CivilsDaily. 14 June 2023. Retrieved 15 October 2024.
  6. ^ a b "3.94 Lakhs And Counting: How Cyberattacks Are A Worry For Digital India". CyberPeace. 9 June 2022. Retrieved 15 October 2024.
  7. ^ a b "Here's what you need to know about the Digital India initiative", Daily News and Analysis, Mumbai, 28 September 2015
  8. ^ "Government School in Remote Bandahalli Village Gets Inspired by make in India", The New Indian Express, 15 March 2016, archived from the original on 15 March 2016
  9. ^ a b c d e "Digital India Week: Digital Locker, MyGov.in, and other projects that were unveiled", The Indian Express, 5 July 2015
  10. ^ "GST to take care of many of e-commerce firms' tax issues: IT minister", Live Mint, 21 November 2014
  11. ^ "Digital India For Atmanirbhar Bharat – Transforming The Rural Areas". Aatmnirbhar Sena. 20 November 2020.
  12. ^ "About Bharat Broadband Network Limited", Bharat Broadband Network Limited
  13. ^ Subramaniam, Nikhil (22 March 2013), "India's 'fantastic' broadband project that you should know about", Tech2
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  15. ^ Jones, Claire (16 December 2019). "India's payments revolution". Financial Times. Retrieved 16 December 2019.
  16. ^ "Modi's website gets new, mobile-friendly look", Business Standard, New Delhi, BS Reporter, 16 January 2016
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  18. ^ "Digital India Health Summit recognises the role of healthtech". ETHealthworld.com. Retrieved 16 December 2019.
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  22. ^ a b Mendonca, Jochelle (29 February 2016), "Budget 2016: Technology initiatives to boost Digital India drive", The Economic Times
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  32. ^ "Software body organises event to honour women", www.meity.gov.in, retrieved 20 September 2023
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  34. ^ "Pradhan Mantri Gramin Digital Saksharta Abhiyan". Vikaspedia. Retrieved 22 May 2017.
  35. ^ "2,351 करोड़ से गांवों को डिजिटल साक्षर बनाएगी सरकार, PMGDISHA को मंजूरी" (in Hindi). Live Hindustan. 9 February 2017.
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  37. ^ "Cabinet nod for rural digital literacy programme". The Hindu. 9 February 2017.
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  61. ^ a b "The Statesman: Digital India at the expense of Net neutrality?", The Statesman, 8 October 2015
  62. ^ "Clipping of The Statesman - Delhi". The Statesman. 29 September 2015.
  63. ^ Dipankan Bandopadhyay (14 April 2017). "Digital India and Indian Railways". Politics Now.
  64. ^ "India Internet Conference 2017: Minds meet on country's digital future", Financial Express, 6 April 2017
  65. ^ "Digital India campaign;Panchkula comes out on top among all districts of Haryana". The Indian Express. The Express Group. 26 December 2015. Retrieved 27 December 2017.
  66. ^ "India is adding 10 million active internet users per month: Google". Business Standard India. 27 June 2018. Retrieved 26 October 2018.
  67. ^ a b c Thomas, Pradip Ninan (11 July 2012). Digital India: Understanding Information, Communication and Social Change. SAGE Publications India. ISBN 9788132116851.
  68. ^ Nagarajan, Rema (20 September 2015). "To fix social problems, invest in human beings, not tech magic: Kentaro Toyama". Times of India.
  69. ^ Toyama, Kentaro (2015), "Geek Heresy: Rescuing Social Change from the Cult of Technology", PublicAffairs
  70. ^ a b Walsham, Geoff (2010). "ICTS for the Broader Development of India: An Analysis of the Literature" (PDF). The Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries. 41: 1–20. doi:10.1002/j.1681-4835.2010.tb00293.x. S2CID 153714812.
  71. ^ Block, Daniel. "How Reliance Jio is monopolising the telecom sector". The Caravan. Retrieved 22 May 2019.
  72. ^ "Aadhaar: Watch out, Aadhaar biometrics are an easy target for hackers". The Economic Times. 23 October 2017. Retrieved 15 October 2024.
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