Digital India Programme

About Digital India Programme

India is amongst the top 2 countries globally, just behind China on many dimensions of digital adoption. By 2022, India’s digital economy is likely to cross $1 trillion.

The vision of Digital India Programme

• Digital infrastructure as Utility to Every Citizen
• Governance and services on demand
• Digital empowerment of citizens

Objectives of Digital India Programme

• To prepare India for a knowledge future.
• For being transformative that is to realize IT (Indian Talent) + IT (Information Technology) = IT (India Tomorrow).
• Making technology central to enabling change.
• On being an Umbrella Programme – covering many departments.
• The programme weaves together a large number of ideas and thoughts into a single, comprehensive vision so that each of them is seen as part of a larger goal.
• The Digital India Programme will pull together many existing schemes which would be restructured and re-focused and implemented in a synchronized manner.

9 pillars of Digital India Program

1. Broadband Highways
2. Universal Access to Mobile Connectivity
3. Public Internet Access Programme
4. e-Governance: Reforming Government through Technology
5. e-Kranti - Electronic Delivery of Services
6. Information for All
7. Electronics Manufacturing
8. IT for Jobs
9. Early Harvest Programmes

Impact of Digital India Programme

• Overall 12000 rural post office branches have been linked electronically.
• Increased in electronic transactions related to e-governance as it is estimated that there are more than 100 cr mobile phones in India.
• 2, 74,246 km of optical fibre network has connected over 1.15lakh Gram Panchayats under the Bharat Net programme.

Common Service Center (CSCs)

• A Common Service Center (CSC) is an information and communication technology (ICT) access point created under the National e-Governance Project of the Indian government.
• A CSC is essentially a kiosk with a personal computer, a wireless connection, and other equipment.
• Through computer and Internet access, the CSCs provide multimedia content related to e-governance, education, health, telemedicine, entertainment, and other government and private services.
• There is a rapid expansion in the network of Common Service Centers.

• It has been estimated that the internet service sector is expected to reach $74 billion in 2022. Internet data has become the major tool for the delivery of services.
• India till Dec 2017 had made tremendous progress in urban internet penetration with 64%. However, four fifths of rural India is yet to get access to the internet.
• Presently, there are 300 million daily active users which has risen from 10-15 million daily users in 2011. And, it is estimated that by 2020 the number would double.

Initiatives launched by the Government of India under the Digital India Programme

• Digilockers—it is a "digital locker" service operated by the Government of India that enables Indian citizens to store certain official documents on the cloud. The service is aimed at reducing the need to carry physical documents.
• BHIM app—It is an app to enable digital payments. BHIM app was used to facilitate 913 million transactions in 2017-18.
• Pradhan Mantri Gramin Digital Saksharta Abhiyan to make citizens digitally literate. The project is expected to be one of the largest initiatives in the country with an overall target of training 6 crore students until the financial year, 2019. The government has accepted 250,000 Gram Panchayats to register at least 200-300 candidates each.