Modi’s Digital India has to pick up pace
The Centre must launch IT awareness projects, speed up laying of optical fibre network and invest in cyber security
Launched on July 1, 2015,Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Digital India (DI) initiative generated a great deal of euphoria. With emphasis on e-governance, project’s objective was to create an empowered society and knowledge economy. While the initiative is great on paper, its execution has been far behind schedule.
The major hurdle towards implementing the DI mission is the wide digital divide that exists in the country. Even though mobile penetration in India is high, Internet connectivity is one of the lowest in the world. Without connectivity, the effectiveness of digital services is hugely compromised. Lack of language and digital literacy in using technology to access and use information is another problem. Although inexpensive smartphones are available, most people — especially in rural and semi-rural areas — have no idea how to use them. The root cause of such barriers is our under-resourced education system and abysmally low IT awareness among user communities.
Nations are recognising the transformational impact of bringing more of their population online. India needs to do this with urgency and speed. Most of India is still not connected – even if they are, the network infrastructure is so poor that speed is a major concern. This must change, and fast.
For effective implementation of the Digital India mission the laying of the National Optical Fibre Network has to be speeded up on a war-footing. At the moment, this is taking place at a snail’s speed. The Bharat Broadband Network Limited and its implementing agencies are slow in technology adaptation. They need to pull up their socks to deliver on PM Modi’s vision of Digital India.
Another important reason for the slow implementation of Digital India is lack of understanding of new technologies such as cloud, mobility and IoT. Digital India content is highly vulnerable and needs to be secured against cyber attacks. But cyber security is not being given the attention it deserves.
To speedily translate the PM’s vision of Digital India into reality, we need to have a multipronged strategy and work on multidiscipline areas to bridge the digital divide that exists in India at present. The simplest way of doing this is through mass IT awareness programmes. We also need to cut down on bureaucracy in the implementation of the National Optical Fibre Network– this is the first and most important step to connect the country on high-speed broadband. Finally, there is no option but to think of cloud-based solutions to disseminate digital services.