Technology enabled human ingenuity to flourish, progress and execute things that have been envisioned by humans themselves. When technology combines with process change innovation, it has the potential to change the world through digitalisation. It is almost surreal to step back and ponder over those days where we embraced every opportunity and turned into something that would advance our standard of living and make a place worth existing.
From the very inception, India appreciated adopting an atmosphere where one can receive the advantage of every minor thing from the foreign countries even at the time of British dictatorship, starting from our constitution, our lifestyle, and infrastructure to attracting foreign investors to invest in the Indian market. India has been keen to keep amicable relationships with the foreign countries for the betterment of our society and lately our honourable Prime Minister is doing the best of his ability to maintain this relationship by visiting Silicon Valley and spreading awareness about Digital India initiative, also through social media platforms like Facebook, interacting with Mark Zuckerberg ( CEO of Facebook) stating that “social media reduces social barriers and connects human values and not identities”.
Digital India wouldn’t have been possible without mobile technology. It was a mobile revolution where products were sent to the markets through partnership to other companies helped to build an ecosystem and supply chipsets to various companies and in return transfer technology which would otherwise be insatiable to produce due to the expense. For the last 20 years there has been rapid growth from 85 million connections to 7.2 billion connections globally. In 1994, India came up with Cellular Technology to being telecommunications to people which looked like a desk phone. That time it was voice dominated, quite expensive and limited. Indian operators valued the technology which could give then superior coverage, excellent voice quality and efficient use of spectrum and then emerged “One Nation One Rupee” project which radically decreased the cost of connectivity. As we are going through these technology transmissions from 2G to 4G, we are trying to help the operators to manage the tremendous and ever growing demand for mobile broadband. According to 2014 statistics, India has around 120 million mobile broadband users which would increase to 600 million in 2020. It is also anticipated that the market growth will extend from 82 million units of smart phones in 2014 to 252 million units in 2020 can create ample number of economic opportunities for companies both inside and outside of India. As a result of which India is now the second largest Telecom market in Asia.
Digital India is an umbrella programme which will transform India into digitally empowered knowledge economy, the significant motive behind this campaign has many initiatives but the foundation of this programme is cloud computing and connectivity. Digital information begins with people and not technology so creative expression and mass communication through magazines and websites is no longer sufficient. The interaction between business and customers, school and its students, government and its citizens is what is going to drive towards success. To have an impact on business sectors, public sectors must deliver highly customised, personalized engaging experiences to every citizen and understand what each citizens wants to accomplish. Since India has the fastest growing internet users and is the fast growing start-ups in the world, Qualcomm will fund 10 billion rupees to accelerate development of India in ICT echo system for faster promising Indian start-ups that will eventually give employment to many citizens in India. These foreign investors do not hesitate to invest in Indian companies due to dematerialisation since all the securities are kept in an electronic form so that transferring of securities are done without much time consumption and less crimes like forgery, theft are committed.
Digital India Initiative also focuses on e-governance for proper and diligent functioning of government using IT to improve various transactions like online applications and tracking, electronic databases and public grievance redressal where the citizens can complain about any issue or problem to this forum. Recently, e-governance is changed to m-governance where there is a particular mobile app to connect with people and set them free from any sort of paper documents. According to Mr. Narendra Modi, after launching National Optical Fibre network that will take broadband to 6000 villages, all schools and colleges will actually help them to educate rural schools and colleges through skype session as stated by the CEO of Microsoft company. Our prime minister will ensure that wifi hotspots are expanding not only in the airport but at least in 500 railway stations with Google. He has also promised to install 10 indie languages next month to push digital literacy forward, use information technology to build smart cities, aiding the farmers with online facilities to make their life less vulnerable.
Under eKranti electronic delivery of services comes e justice where president has stressed on implementation of e courts for speedy delivery of justice as Indian Judiciary had not been able to meet the aspirations of the people in respect of justice and the proceedings were always time consuming and frustrating to the victims, thus e courts are connected to all police stations, forensics, prisons and everything will be done online which includes payment of fees.
Digital India Initiative is vast and mammoth in relation to its objectives so I have pointed out the most important ones. India, still being the third world country where literacy rate is 73% , where vicious circle of poverty still exists, beggars lying on the streets, thousands unemployed, minor children are still forced to be married, dowry system still not eradicated completely, marital rape is legal and there is always turmoil within the parties in India, in such circumstances these issues seems more vital than Digital India initiative because once these problems are completely erased our initiative is good to go. If everything is manipulated digitally then there will be more cyber crime cases even if there is strict security in every field. Digital India Initiative is undoubtedly a dream campaign for the people of India but there are more intense issues that need to be solved rather than just developing India for the sake of looking fancier from outside but inside is just a pit hole.
Featured Photo Courtesy: Digit.in
