A flurry of projects is being launched under the Digital India programme on a regular basis. Some of the major projects include the digital payments app BHIM, Government e-Market (GeM), Aadhaar linked e-Sign and digital locker, Mobile Seva, MyGov, Bharat Net, National Scholarship Portal and e-Hospital. Digital India is a very ambitious programme aimed at transforming India into a digitally empowered economy and knowledge society. It was approved in August 2014 with great expectations to usher the country in a new era of digitally driven growth and prosperity. How has the programme performed in its nearly three years of implementation and what lies next for it? What mid-course corrections, if any, can be made to enable it to achieve its desired outcomes in the future?
Digital India is centered on three key vision areas. The first element of the vision is to provide digital infrastructure to every citizen and create access points for delivering digital services. The second vision area focuses on providing access to government services on demand. The third vision area focuses on capacity building and empowering citizens so that they can become active participants in a digitally driven economy. The programme covers nine pillars of growth areas which include broadband highways, universal access to mobile connectivity, public Internet access programme, reforming government through technology, electronic delivery of services, information for all, IT for jobs, electronics manufacturing and early harvest projects.
The achievements under the programme have been noteworthy though the full impacts of the projects are yet to be realized. Under the Bharat Net project, optical fibre connectivity has reached over 75,000 panchayats, covering about 30% of all the panchayats. Government data centres and wide area networks have been established in almost all the states. Over 3 lakh common service centres (CSCs) to deliver government and business services have been established across the country. These CSCs cover over 1.72 lakh panchayats. The government has keenly pushed JAM (Jan Dhan, Aaadhaar and Mobile) to ensure financial inclusion. Aadhaar enrolment has crossed 112 crores while the Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) has shown promising results in schemes like scholarships, PAHAL, public distribution system, MGNREGS and the National Social Assistance Programme. The Mobile Seva project has brought about a transformation in delivering government services through mobiles. Both Digital Locker and the MyGov platforms have over 40 lakh registered users.
Though the projects under Digital India have made a good beginning, it is clear that they are yet to achieve their desired outcomes considering the large population (especially in rural areas) and geographical expanse of the country. How can the programme achieve its full impact within the targeted timeframe? It must be realized that the penetration of e-governance services is still low in the country due to lack of ICT infrastructure and low digital literacy. Lack of local language support is also an important barrier. Further, the full potential of the mobile platform for delivering government services has not been realized and new technologies for enhancing the effectiveness of the applications, such as data analytics, Internet of Things and GIS, have not been exploited fully. The performance has also varied significantly across the states.
What can be done to enhance the effectiveness of the projects under Digital India? We must aim at enhancing the reach and impact of the projects with focus on rural areas and economically weaker sections. For this, the projects must aim at increasing both their scale and scope. While the scale involves enhancing both geographic reach and number of transactions, scope implies that the applications be made end-to-end involving completely paperless, faceless and cashless transactions. Mobile must be made the default access mode for applications to enhance reach and coverage and local language interfaces must be seamlessly integrated. The digital locker ecosystem must be expanded and large scale digitization of records initiated to make all transactions paperless. Similarly, for making all transactions faceless and cashless, Aadhaar should be made the primary mode of authentication and payments. The network of CSCs must be increased to cover every panchayat. We also need to focus on cybersecurity to ensure that our electronic infrastructure and transactions are safe and secured. Institutionally, all states and union territories must be brought on board as key stakeholders in implementation.
To truly enhance the reach of Digital India, we must develop digital villages and digital markets. A digital village would focus on connectivity and applications to provide services digitally in villages, such as tele-health, virtual classrooms and skilling and capacity building. A digital market would help in integrating the rural economy at regional and national levels and bring better remuneration to farmers and artisans.
Ensuring that every citizen is able to benefit from Digital India would require massive efforts at capacity building, especially in the rural areas and amongst women. Government and private organizations also need to enhance their capacities manifold at all levels to deliver their services digitally.
Digital India is transformational in its vision. However, we need to ensure that it reaches each and every Indian to truly achieve this vision.
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