Things to Know about Digital India Campaign
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday (July 1) launched Digital India Week. The same Digital India Week will be organised between 1st July to 7th July. Through this ambitious campaign government is aiming to transform India into a digitally empowered knowledge economy. Digital India week is launched with the vision to create digital infrastructure as a utility to every citizen, digital empowerment of citizens and governance & services on demand. Main pillars of the campaign consists of broadband highways, universal access to phones, public internet access programme, e-Governance for reforming government, e-kranti through electronic delivery of services, Information for all, electronics manufacturing which targets net zero imports, jobs for IT and early harvest programmes.
It consists of various schemes, some of them are mentioned below:
Digital Locker which provides a dedicated personal storage space and linked to the aadhaar number. It aims to minimise the paper-work and helps to share it anytime, anywhere electronically.
National scholarship portal to regularise scholarship process provided by the Government. It will include everything from submission of application form, verification, sanction and disbursal.
Bharat Net programme world's largest rural broadband project to connect 250000 gram panchayats by 2019.
MyGov.in and mobile app helps citizens to connect with the government to provide transparent and efficient governance.
e-Hospital system for important healthcare services such as online registration, fixing doctors appointments, online diagnostics, fee payment and checking blood availability online.
As per the media reports it is clear that digital campaign is a good initiative to compliment 'Make in India' scheme, as it helps to fight the corruption with use of technology for conducting auctions. It has a potential to empower the country and aid economic growth as it aims to create 1.7 crore jobs in IT, Telecom and electronics sector by 2019.Top industrialists of India have committed to invest a total Rs 4,50,000 crore in the campaign, which includes Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries (Rs 250000 crore), Anil Ambani's Reliance ADAG Group (Rs 10000 crore), Kumar Mangalam Birla's Aditya Birla group ( Rs 44,100 crore, Sunil Bharti Mittal's Bharti Airtel (Rs 1,00,000 crore), Anil Agarwal's Vedanta (Rs 40,000 crore) and Delta electronics (Rs 3,150 crore).
As we know grand things don’t come without challenges, it also has to face some challenges like spectrum crunch, which would result in traffic congestion and call drops. Further, the shortfall increases the demand and prices. If price of spectrum increases, companies will not be able to provide internet at affordable prices. This will defeat the very purpose of Digital India initiative but we hope government will take preventive action to overcome the challenges. We also hope that grand Digital India campaign will boost our country and economy as it will create jobs as well as business to the companies involved in IT, Telecom and Electronic sector.