EMPOWERING CITIZENS THROUGH E- SERVICES

The Digital India Programme was launched in 2015 for ensuring digital access, digital inclusion, bridging the digital divide and digital empowerment.

It is leading to India’s transformation in to a knowledge-based economy and digitally empowered society. It has ensured citizen participation and empowerment with the technology that is sustainable.

India is among the top countries that have digital adoption momentum. Presently, digital transformation of India is on an exponential growth path and aiming towards a trillion- dollar digital economy by 2025.

Strategic Steps Taken by Govt. to Realize Trillion-Dollar Economy Potential

Aadhaar has provided a cradle to grave digital identity. Aadhaar enabled Digi Locker is enabling paperless governance by providing public documents to citizens digitally and facilitating consent-based data sharing for availing services.

Aadhaar Enabled payment system (AEPS) facilitates banking services and digital payment.

Aadhaar is the largest de-duplication mechanism for government schemes in the country.

The coverage of Aadhaar (123crore), Jan Dhan Yojana (36 crore) and mobile connections (118 crore) has moulded the digital profile of India.

Jan Dhan Yojana has provided financial inclusion to unbanked people and thereby, it has enabled banking, pension (PMSBY and PMJJBY) and insurance (Atal Pension Yojana) services to common citizens. Mobile has also accelerated the accessibility of government services in rural hinterland.

Digital delivery of services has been strengthened with the help of Common Services Centres (CACs). It provides digital access to over 350 services especially in rural areas at an affordable cost.

These centres have also led to empowerment of marginalized sections of the society by creating jobs for over 12 lakh people and by promoting rural entrepreneurs including women VLEs.

CSCs have also undertaken Stree Swabhiman initiative to create awareness about menstrual health and have set up over 204 sanitary pad units.

Digital India has resulted into a remarkable shift from project-based approach to platform- based approach.

Some of the important citizen centric initiatives of Digital India programme are:

DIRECT BENEFIT TRANSFER

Enables transfer of government benefits directly to the bank account of beneficiaries.

Led to the integration of 440 schemes and the disbursal of INR 7, 33,981 crores, resulting in saving of INR 1, 41,677 crores.

The number of transactions for financial year 2019-20 alone, stands at 21 crores.

DIGI LOCKER

Enables paperless governance by providing private space on public cloud to citizens for storing their public and private documents.

352+ crore documents are available at DigiLocker.

200+ Types of documents are available

UMANG

Provides one mobile app for availing government services through backend integration with several government applications and database.

362 Services are made available from 73 departments and 18 States

E-HOSPITAL

Facilitates automation in hospitals through 20+modules of Hospitals Management Information System, namely patient registration, IPD Pharmacy, Blood bank, etc.

322 hospitals are integrated with e-hospital

e-NAM

Integrated 585 Agricultural Mandis across 16 states and 2 union territories

SWAYAM

A massive online open courses (MOOCs) platform, it offers more than  2000+ programmer categories.

Allows credits to students on the completion of course. The credit is recognized by Universities.

National Scholarship Portal

Provides facility of multiple scholarship schemes through a single online portal and includes application submission from students, verification by School Administration, approval by authorities and disbursal through DBT.

20 scholarship schemes stand integrated.

PMGDISHA

Pradhan Mantri Gramin Digital Saksharta Abhiyan has been started with an aim to make at least one person per family digitally literate.

Target is to train 6 crore persons in rural areas.

India BPO Scheme

A unique initiative to incentivize BPO employment in smaller towns (Tier 2/3 towns) that cover 108 cities and approved 276 units.

GeM

An e-commerce platform for public procurement of common use goods and services

For the first time, many sellers from small towns are participating in public procurement due to end-to-end automation.

Digital Payment

Many innovative digital payment tools, namely BHIM-UPI, BHIM-Aadhaar, BHARAT QR Code, National Electronic Toll Collection etc., have been implemented

Jeevan Pramaan

Facilities pensioners to submit their life certificate digitally from anywhere, anytime basis.

Courts Mission Mode Project

Promotes automation in Courts including Supreme Court, High Court, District Courts Complexes

National Judicial Data Grid is also implemented which analyses the data gathered from all integrated courts and shows all India figures through dashboard.

My Gov

Facilitates participatory governance in the country by providing a common digital platform where citizens can share their views on government programmes and schemes.

Statistics

As per the data from Electronic Transaction Aggregation and Analysis Layer (detail), the portfolio of electronic services has grown to 3,702 and an average number of electronic transactions on a daily basis (till April 2019) is around 9.5 crore.

 

This signifies that the benefits of Digital India have percolated down to a large section of the society.

The BPO movement for smaller towns is facilitating balanced job opportunities. As of now 222 BPO units’ cities and 27 States and UTs.

Under Digital India the programme, India has witnessed a steep growth in mobile manufacturing units.

From just 2 units of mobile phones manufacturing in 2014, 268 units of mobile phone and accessories are now operational in India.

Restructuring of Digital India

Digital India is getting restructured and revamped to raise its bar and, in this direction, several new and innovative schemes have been planned.

Some of the major planned initiatives are India Enterprise Architecture (Idea), National Programme on Artificial Intelligence, open API platform, On Click consent drove address change in all public databases, Meity Startup Hub and GIS-based decision support system  for Districts, etc.,

India aims to offer one government experience by establishing the best-in-class architectural governance, processes and practices with optional utilization of ICT infrastructure and applications.

A National Software Product Mission is planned to implement National Policy on software products-2019 that inter-alia includes nurturing 10,000 technology startups in software products industry and up skillings of 1,000,000 IT professionals.

National programme on AI has been designed with priority mission areas, namely Healthcare, Agriculture, Education, smart cities, Transportation, Cybersecurity energy, finance and Indian Languages.

This programme will be implemented in a hub and spoke model, wherein the proposed National Centre on Artificial Intelligence will act as the hub and Centres of Excellence (CoEs) along with startups will act as spokes. CoEs will facilitate startups industry and deployment of AI-based solutions and will aid Research and Academic institutions in the applied research.

Meity Startups Hub (MSH) has been set-up under the aegis of ministry of Electronics and IT to promote technology innovation, startups and creation of Intellectual  Properties.

MSH will become a one-stop solution for all technology startups in the country. It will also facilitate Technology Incubation and Development of Entrepreneurs (TIDE 2.0) that includes coverage of 51 incubators and 20000 tech startups.

MeitY has recently released “INDIA TRILLION DOLLAR DIGITAL OPPORTUNITY” report to boost the scale, scope and digital innovation of citizen-centric services which can result in a quantum jumping digital contribution to the Indian economy USD 1 Trillion by 2025. Nine specific areas have been identified for government intervention.

These are: i) Doubling farmers’ income; ii) Make in digital India, make for India, Make for world; iii)Jobs and skills for the future; iv) 21st century IT infrastructure & software capabilities; v) e-Governance of the future; vi) Healthcare for all; vii) Quality education for the future; viii) Energy for all; ix) Next generation financial services

 

Conclusion

India’s resonance towards digital technologies has now moved from the corridors of the empowered society and providing substantive benefits to the common masses, thus demonstrating the power of technology.

Govt is embracing changing landscape of technology & is committed to ensure state-of-the- art technology enabled citizen, welfare of society and for socio-economic development of the country.

Keynotes/keywords

It is a full-fledged article on Digital India.

You must save it for future reference.

Important for both prelims and mains.