IMPACT OF DIGITAL INDIA
Digital India is a forerunner programme by the Government of India to transform India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy. In last decade Government came up with various e-governance initiatives which were citizen centric. However they have not been able to make the desired impact and fulfill desired objectives. In order to transform India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy, current government has come up with an idea of Digital India Programme. The campaign aims to develop a digitally empowered society and to digitally integrate the government departments and the citizens of India. It aims at ensuring the government services are made available to people of India electronically.
The whole process of digitalizing India is much needed one as it catalyses the phase of growth and development in the country. There is a need to digitalize basic facilities and necessities today to remain competitive in the global arena of development and growth. Getting basic amenities from the government like birth, death certificates, paying of water, property, etc. taxes, PDS to citizen and specific facilities like lodging police complaint, application to a government job requires complete digitatization to avoid the impediments that one shall encounter when they are done in conventional way.
Integrating all services provided by the government through digital portals will serve two kinds of purposes: One the government can cater to large number of people in a simple, cost effective, easy way at a short span of time and secondly government can keep track of services that are being provided without much stress. Integrating government services can be achieved through the UIDAI (Aadhar) cards.
Digital India campaign by the government also focuses on the areas of providing internet connectivity to larger extent, digitalizing government offices to avoid “red-tapism”, providing cloud based data services (Digital locker), protecting citizen information (National Cyber Security Policy 2013) by placing data hosting centers in India and improvising the quality and speed of the data services by improvising the telecommunication infrastructure.
India should also concentrate much on cyber security part due to large scale data thefts in PSUs since the whole idea of cyber security is an evolving phenomena, creating a successive competitive environment to the telecos, safeguarding the citizen’s interest by assuring the privacy on data and limiting the service giants on the use of user data. Digital India aims at providing greater Connectivity and greater access to information so that people can be benefitted with the development and government policies for them.
Another advantage of greater penetration of Information Technology will enable citizens to file grievance online, book tickets online, go through the feedbacks of other tourists which will help them finding nice tourist spot with better hotels. It will also boost economy as nowadays many traders and business houses have gone online to sell their products. It benefits buyers also because these online traders facilitate home delivery of products. People will get more options for a particular product and it will improve competition in market. Also internet connectivity through high speed highways will help students and teachers to find information about any topic, se it is good for education also. People can access government services like Passport Seva, Income Tax Filling, Pan Card application, Submission of electricity Bill etc. which are online. It will make their lives easier and hassle free.
The Vision area of digital India is Infrastructure as Utility to Every Citizen, Governance and Services on Demand and Digital Empowerment of Citizens etc. The Infrastructure as Utility to Every Citizen with High speed internet as a core utility shall be made available in all Gram Panchayats. Cradle to grave digital identity shall be made unique, lifelong, online and authenticable. Mobile phone and Bank account would enable participation in digital and financial space at individual level. it provides an easy access to a Common Service Centre within their locality and a shareable private space on a public domain. In other words, it envisions a safe and secure Cyber-space in the country.
Governance and Services on Demand are seamlessly integrated across departments or jurisdictions to provide easy and a single window access to all persons, The Government services which are available in real time from online and mobile platforms and the citizen entitlements to be available on the Cloud to ensure easy access. Government services digitally transformed for improving Ease of Doing Business. It aims to make the financial transactions above a threshold, electronic and cashless and leveraging GIS (Geographical Information System) for decision support systems and development.
Digital India envisions Digital Empowerment of Citizens with a view to achieving Universal digital literacy. It aims to provide the much needed boost to several pillars of growth like establishing broadband highways, universal access to mobile connectivity, public internet access programme, e-governance, electronic delivery system, information for all etc. While on one hand government is creating an environment where people can easily access government services on electronic devices so that corruption and loss of data can be handled and efficiency of system can be increased, on the other side the government has come up with a much important initiative called as ‘Green India’ to protect our habitat. Green India aims at protecting, restoring and enhancing forest covers and responding to climate change by combination of adaptation and mitigation measures.
A digital India in full bloom is a behemoth project that requires huge amount of money and resources. However for the larger and enduring prosperity of the country that will be heralded in the aftermath of digitalization of India, it holds good.