In News
- The Digital India Programme has made the country digitally empowered in the area of technology.
About the Digital India programme
- Vision:
- Government launched the Digital India programme with the vision of transforming India into a digitally empowered society and a knowledge-based economy, by ensuring
- digital access,
- digital inclusion,
- digital empowerment and
- bridging the digital divide.
- Government launched the Digital India programme with the vision of transforming India into a digitally empowered society and a knowledge-based economy, by ensuring
- The programme is centred on three key vision areas:
- Digital infrastructure as a core utility to every citizen,
- Governance and services on demand, and
- Digital empowerment of citizens.
- Goal:
- The overall goal is to ensure that
- Digital technologies improve the life of every citizen,
- Expand India’s digital economy,
- Create investment and employment opportunities and
- Create digital technological capabilities in India.
- The overall goal is to ensure that
- Outcomes of the programme:
- Digital India has considerably reduced the distance between the Government and citizens.
- It has also helped in the delivery of substantial services directly to the beneficiary in a transparent and corruption-free manner.
- In the process, India has emerged as one of the pre-eminent nations of the world to use technology to transform the lives of its citizens.
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Key initiatives undertaken by MeitY under the Digital India programme:
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Significance of the Digital India campaign
- Ending corruption:
- The Digital India campaign has helped save Rs 2.25 lakh crore from falling into the wrong hands in the past eight years.
- Eliminating middle-men:
- Digital India has saved money for the common man by ending the network of middle-men
- Transparency:
- The transparency that has come due to Digital India has eliminated corruption at various levels adversely affecting the poor and the middle class.
- Direct Benefit Transfer:
- In the last eight years, more than Rs 23 lakh crore has been transferred through Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) to beneficiaries.
- The trio of Jan Dhan, Mobile and Aadhaar, or JAM:
- It has provided maximum benefit to the poor and the middle class.
- Finding missing children:
- Digital India has helped missing children reconnect with their parents.
- Digital India helped the government tackle the crisis arising out of the Covid pandemic:
- CoWin and Aarogya Setu are two mobile applications that helped provide 200 crore vaccine doses.
- Ending digital divide:
- Digital India has also helped bridge the digital divide that exists between rural and urban India.
Challenges
- Gender gap:
- Indian women are 15 per cent less likely to own a mobile phone and 33 per cent less likely to use mobile internet services than men.
- Women constitute only one-third of internet users in India.
- Skewed penetration:
- Among states, Maharashtra has the highest internet penetration, followed by Goa and Kerala, while Bihar has the lowest, followed by Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand.
- India’s global rank:
- According to the UN’s e-participation index (2022), which is a composite measure of three important dimensions of e-government, namely provision of online services, telecommunication connectivity and human capacity, India ranks 105 out of 193 nations.
- Online safety:
- According to a survey, more than half of young women have experienced violence online, including sexual harassment, threatening messages and having private images shared without consent.
- Women’s rights defenders and female journalists were targeted for abuse more than most.
- Inadequate artificial intelligence:
- The third threat comes from badly designed artificial intelligence systems that repeat and exacerbate discrimination.
Way Ahead
- Creation of an entity:
- An empowered entity needs to be set up which is accountable for quality and timeliness to design and construct digital highways, and their rural branches, and ensure their optimum utilisation by sharing the infrastructure.
- Skills:
- Digital skills, required today both for life and for livelihoods, must be imparted on a war footing by transforming government digital literacy programmes into skilling missions, and expanding outreach, including through the private sector.
- Online safety of women:
- Social media sites can use their “algorithm power” to proactively tackle the issue of safety.
- Government needs to strengthen laws that hold online abusers to account, and the public to speak up whenever they witnessed abuse online.
Source: TH