Programme ‘Digital India’ ( The PM remarked IT+IT equals IT. This means: India Today + Information Technology (through Digital India) = India Tomorrow) A $17-billion government program to build a national optical fiber network that will connect India’s gram panchayats, or village-level governments, aims to cover the entire country in three years and could be a game changer. The Narendra Modi Cabinet gave approval for Digital India — an ambitious programme to “transform India into digital empowered society and knowledge economy”. Envisaged by the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (Deity), Digital India will be implemented in phases from the current year till 2018. Digital India is transformational in nature and is aimed at ensuring that government services are available to citizens electronically. It would also bring in public accountability through mandated delivery of government’s services electronically. The programme aims at providing digital infrastructure as a utility to every citizen as well as high-speed internet as a core utility in all gram panchayats. It also envisions providing a “cradle to grave digital identity” that is “unique, lifelong and online”. The overall scope of this programme is “to prepare India for a knowledge future”, “to make technology central to enabling change” and “to become an umbrella programme covering many departments”. The programme aims to seamlessly integrate departments to provide easy and a single window access to all persons. It also aims at making available government services in real time from online and mobile platforms. The government will set up a programme management structure for monitoring implementation of his programme. The key components of the management structure would consist of the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) for according approval to projects, a Monitoring Committee headed by the Prime Minister, a Digital India Advisory Group chaired by the Minister of Communications and IT, an Apex Committee chaired by the Cabinet Secretary. The Digital India project that aims to offer a one-stop shop for government services would use the mobile phone as the backbone of its delivery mechanism. The government hopes the Rs 1.13-lakh crore initiative that seeks to transform India into a connected economy to also attract investment in electronics manufacturing, create millions of jobs and support trade. The government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants to ensure a smartphone in the hands of every citizen by 2019. Currently, nearly 74% of the population has mobile phones, most of which though is in the hands of urban India. In order to use the mobile phone to help achieve financial inclusion, the government will need to structure the delivery of financial services in a manner that encourages a villager to go for mobile banking. For instance, the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana, a financial inclusion plan the Prime Minister announced on August 15, can be effectively rolled out through mobile handsets. The programme seeks to give every household in rural India access to bank account, along with a RuPay debit card and insurance cover of Rs 1 lakh. At present, nearly 60% of the nation’s population doesn’t have access to financial services. Digital India promises to transform India into a connected knowledge economy offering world-class services at the click of a mouse and will be implemented in a phased manner. Plans to digitally connect the entire country will be supported by 20- and 40-hour modules on digital literacy in regional languages, which the government plans to run over the next few years. The government feels that open access to “broadband highways” across cities, towns and villages would give a fillip to trade across the country. The other important benefit we see is surge in e-commerce. If we can bring broadband to the remotest corners of the country it will give rise to trade and warehousing. Supporting the initiatives will be 6-7 manufacturing clusters for electronic goods which have been approved to be set up in Jharkhand, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh for products such as mobile handsets, microchip and chip-less designs and set-top boxes.
Posted on: Wed, 26 Nov 2014 04:47:15 +0000
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