Digital India is a campaign launched by the Government of India to make its services available to citizens electronically through 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.
As of 31 December 2018, India had a population of 130 crore people (1.3 billion), 130 crore (1.3 billion) Aadhaar digital biometric identity cards, 150 crore (1.5 billion) mobile phones, 100.6 crore (446 million) smartphones, 130 crore (1.3 billion) internet users up from 481 million people (80% of the country's total population) in December 2017, and 71 per cent growth in e-commerce.[3][4]
History
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.[5][6][7] The Digital India programme aimed to promote inclusive growth in the areas of electronic services, products, manufacturing and job opportunities. It is centred on three key areas – digital infrastructure as a utility to every citizen, governance and services on demand, and digital empowerment of citizens.[8] The plan also attempted to expand access to the internet in rural areas through the implementation of the Netcare System program.
Digital India initiative
The Government of India's entity Bharat Broadband Network Limited (BBNL) which executes the BharatNet project is the custodian of Digital India[9] (DI) project.[10][11]
New digital services
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.[12][13]
MyGov.in is a platform to share inputs and ideas on matters of policy and governance.[14] It is a platform for citizen engagement in governance, through a "Discuss", "Do" and "Disseminate" approach.[7]
eHospital application provides important services such as online registration, payment of fees and appointment, online diagnostic reports, enquiring availability of blood online, etc.[16][17]
Digital attendance: attendance.gov.in was launched by PMNarendra Modi on 1 July 2015,[5] to keep a record of the attendance of Government employees on a real-time basis.[18] This initiative started with implementation of a common Biometric Attendance System (BAS) in the central Government offices located in Delhi.[19]
Back-end digitisation
Black money eradication: The 2016 Union budget of India announced eleven technology initiatives including the use of data analytics to prevent tax evasion.[20] Digital Literacy mission will cover six crore rural households.[20] It was planned to connect 550 farmer markets in the country through the use of technology.[21]
Facilities to digitally empower citizens
Digital Locker facility aims to help citizens to digitally store their important documents like PAN card, Passport, mark sheets 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.[7][22][23]
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.[24]
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.[25] An Indian-based company, Data Xgen Technologies Pvt Ltd, has launched world's first free linguistic email address under the name ‘DATAMAIL’[26] 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.[27]
Visakhapatnam created 10,000 jobs under the India BPO Promotion Scheme (IBPS) of Digital India, Andhra Pradesh state got 13,792 seat, out of 48,300 seats in India.[31][32]Pulsus secured 4,095 IBPS seats out of 48,300, and invested Rs. 440 crore, leading to 5,000 jobs in Visakhapatnam, with 4,000 being women,[33] and secured Rs. 41 crore in viability gap funding.[34]
Training
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.[35][36][37] Pradhan Mantri Gramin Digital Saksharta Abhiyan (abbreviated as PMGDisha[38]) is an initiative under Digital India program, approved by The Union Cabinet chaired by the PM Narendra Modi.[39][40] 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.[41][42][43]
Annual Digital India Summit & Awards were held in 2016.[44]
E-Cabinet
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.[45] The ministers accessed the agenda of the Cabinet meeting in electronic form by logging into the app on their laptops or Tabs.[46]
E-Pragati
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.[47]
Bhudhaar
Bhudhaar is a 2018 E-Governance project that is intended to assign an 11-digit unique number[48] to every land parcel in the state of Andhra Pradesh,[49] as part of the "land hub in E-Pragati programme".[50] Bhuseva Authority, an inter-departmental committee was formed to implement and monitor its progress.[51] 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)
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.[52] 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.[53] 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.[54]
Loan charge
Loan charge creation project of Government of Andhra Pradesh was initially developed in India to curtail bogus and multiple loans issued to farmers.[55] 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.[56]
In 2017 the government of Vietnam opened discussions with the government of India on emulating its use of cybersecurity and egovernance.[57]
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$2.8 trillion) towards the initiative.[58] 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.[59]
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.[60]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.[61] Oracle plans to invest in 20 states and will work on payments and Smart city initiatives.[62] 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.[63]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."[64] Later the Prime Minister office clarified that net neutrality will be maintained at all costs and vetoed the Basic Internet plans.[63] Digital India has also been influential in promoting the interests of the Indian Railways.[65]
Criticisms
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.[66] Instead, governments must adjust solutions to the specific political and social context of their nation.[66] 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.[67][68]
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.[66] It is also difficult to scale up initiatives to affect all Indians, and fundamental attitudinal and institutional change is still an issue.[69] While much ICT research has been conducted in Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, and Gujarat, poorer states such as Bihar and Odisha are rarely mentioned.[69]
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.[70]
Impact
The number of Indian internet subscribers grew to over 500 million by April 2017.[71] On 28 December 2015, Panchkula district of Haryana was awarded for being the top-performing district in the state under the Digital India campaign.[72]
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.[73]
