The world has never been more digital as it is now, and it is increasingly becoming even more so. As more and more people get connected to the Internet, the nature of work; why, even the nature of life as we know it is changing.
This is as much true of India as it is of any other country. Even so, the ‘Digital India’ programme has explicitly declared it as official; the aim is to bring the benefits of digitization to aid the citizenry in as many ways as possible – more services, delivered faster, remotely, securely, transparently and 24x7x365.
Communication technologies have not only made it possible to deliver services to almost anyone, but also to offer better quality of service as broadband speed keeps increasing with improved wireline and wireless technology.
India’s efforts at deploying the Internet to improve services are only beginning to take root; probably the earliest and currently most widespread availability and use of it at the common man’s level is in railway reservations. With the unique, biometric-based identification enabled by the Aadhaar card, the ability of the government to offer more services of all kinds to its citizens has improved manifold.
With this, it can reach out to its citizens to and ensure that they receive services and schemes they are eligible for, enable and deliver pensions, subsidies and other benefits, deploy tele-medicine services, remotely, securely, quickly, transparently and in a scalable manner.
The Digital India programme is being largely built around the Aadhaar card and as the Indian economy – currently at a pace of growth that is envied by other nations – grows into a mightly one, the benefits of digitization to the country at large are unparalleled. This has been recognized by the government, which is now at work on spreading accessibility to several programmes, some among them being the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana, Atal Pension Yojana, Sukanya Samriddhi Yojana and the Digital Locker initiative, using the Internet in an unprecedented manner and pace.
India is one of the fastest growing markets for smartphones and with the market opening up in tier-2 and tier-3 towns, it will provide a big push for M-Governance initiatives. Marrying the ubiquity of mobile technology with governance systems and processes in the past has resulted in benefits for citizens and the government alike. Some examples are monitoring and improving election and project implementation, optimizing traffic flows, crime prevention, discouraging corruption to name a few.
Universal access to mobile connectivity is expected to come about by 2018. On the strength of such an infrastructure being established, it is expected that by 2017, government programmes will reach 2,50,000 Gram Panchayats and Post Offices across the country, with both serving as multiservice Centres.
In some cases, starting online portals will help citizens pay taxes of various kinds and that itself is of huge help in avoiding time wastage and enabling such tasks to be carried out remotely and at any time or day. In other cases, a bit more use of technology is necessitated such as in the Digital Locker initiative, while in yet others, online examinations facilitate both state and central government educational programmes.
Obviously, some uses of digitization, as in using tele-medicine to build a physically healthier populace and in disbursing pensions, gain precedence because of their humanitarian nature. Such efforts at deploying digital technology are continuing at a faster pace, enabled by improvements in communication technologies.
Clearly, digitization has started to change the nature of government-citizen interaction. It has had a slow take-off, having been limited by a lower Internet penetration but has gathered steam.
As the reach of the Internet steamrolls across the country – just look at how many Internet-based startups we now have (for hotel rooms, ethnic wear, buying and selling vehicles and the like) - business increases, spreading if not prosperity itself, at least empowering individuals and resulting in more financial and economic activity.
Merely having its existing public welfare programmes as Internet-based as possible is a grand exercise, given the size and spread of our large population. However, as the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana shows, greater financial inclusion is also possible by leveraging the Internet.
The aim of Digital India is enabling technology to improve the standard of living in all respects: either by enabling e-commerce, speeding up the granting of clearances and licences for ‘Make in India’ programmes, empowering citizens, distributing pensions remotely, accessibility to benefits such as subsidies and many others. As the economy grows bigger and business activity rises, individuals and thus society stands to benefit as never before from digital technology. India is officially at work on it now.
