JOIN USOf all the initiatives announced by the Centre, the Digital India programme is the most ambitious, with the power to transform the lives of people as never before. The communication revolution has changed people’s lives but its possibilities have not been harnessed fully to give them easy access to public utilities, to provide services and to empower citizens. The digital divide is still very wide. Internet access and speed are very low, with only 10 crore broadband subscribers in a country of 125 crore people. But with 85 crore active mobile telephone users, there is an opportunity to leapfrog into the age of e-governance on mobile phones, short-circuiting intermediate stages. The benefits are immense. Transparency in governance, direct access to services without intermediaries, saving of costs, prevention of leakage of public funds, faster development and employment creation on a large scale are some obvious benefits. The programme will go hand in hand with other initiatives like the Make in India and the Jan Dhan scheme and will complement them.
The challenge is clear from the aims. The plan is to digitally connect every Indian and provide broadband connectivity to every part of the country in the next four years. A seamless broadband highway will be laid across 2,50,000 villages in the coming months with the proposed BharatNet. The facilities to be made available are digital lockers to store documents, an e-sign framework to digitally sign documents with Aadhaar authentication, digitisation of documents including land records, online registration in hospitals and extensive use of digital tools in education. Emergence as a centre of excellence in the Internet of Things space is another aim. It also envisages development of a large IT and electronics industry by 2020 so that imports in this sector can be stopped by then and 10 crore new jobs can be created.
The difficulties in realising the digital dream are equally daunting. The national fibre optic network, which is crucial for the programme, has been slow in making and has seen many failed deadlines. The allocation of spectrum has seen many controversies. Apart from creation of massive infrastructure, changes in laws will be required in some areas. Issues of privacy, cyber security and data protection will have to be addressed seriously. Investment is going to be huge. The private sector has committed itself to an investment of Rs 4.5 lakh crore, which will have to be in the form of big public-private partnerships. However, the most important requirement for the success of the programme will be the willingness of authorities to make governance transparent, corruption-free and efficient.