The concept of “DIGITAL INDIA” may be new for many people so before going into depth let us take this definition from Wikipedia what it says about digital India.
What is Digital India?
Digital India is an initiative of Government of India to integrate the government departments and the people of India. It aims at ensuring the government services are made available to citizens electronically by reducing paperwork. The initiative also includes plan to connect rural areas with internet networks. Digital India has three core components. These include the creation of digital infrastructure, delivering services digitally and digital literacy.
So the concept mainly depends on three main pillars of digital infrastructure, delivering services digitally and digital literacy, building one by one can be the successful reason for accelerating vision of digital India.
1) Digital Infrastructure- India is still a poor country in terms of infrastructure except few big cities and state capitals not many places have the luxury of technology, computers, internet, and online businesses either because of less electricity power or because of negligence by government to these issues. The things that need to be done for completing the first mission is-
i) At least two hour of uninterrupted power supply in a day at a particular time (still many places are getting only 5-8 hours power supply in irregular timings) so that people can rely on internet or any other resources at a given time and take benefit from it.
ii) Establishing of broadband facilities at lower costs as most of the people will take it as extra burden in their life if the cost is high and will never use it.
iii) Availability of computers in panchayat, tahsil and district headquarters with internet connections round the clock so that anybody can use it anytime for general purpose. It should not be in the hands of authorities but should be headed by some local people and an operator from the government side.
iv) Every school, hospital, police station must be connected to at least one computer with 24-hour facilities.
v) Government should establish computers in every office at least one computer in each department to do the daily routine work from it.
2) Delivering services digitally- After establishing infrastructure the next steps comes to establish government services on internet that can be used by this infrastructure. So the common services that can be first delivered by to accelerate mission are-
i) Online electricity/water/transport bills
ii) Online transactions for buying/selling agricultural products to government or from government.
iii)Tracking Ration card status on internet.
iv)Online submission of taxes.
v) Government should start its own service for online shopping related to products that are not easily available in villages and towns in manageable rates.
vi)Online Hospital facility.
vii) Online School facility that connects each and every school in the country like a social network where articles, journals can be read and write by different teachers.
viii) Easy citizen services on which a person can take their birth certificate, caste certificate, domicile certificate and other necessary documents easily. Only for a first-time registration he/she should produce originals.
ix) Online sports services such that the government can appoint a physical instructor/coach in a particular place by getting decent number of application from the local citizen willing to join the particular sport.
x) And many more services that can help both government employees as well as local citizens.
3) Digital literacy – After completing Infrastructure and services both now government should focus on to promoting these things to the citizens for which it is been developed by the following points-
i) Organizing computer literacy session at regular interval of time.
ii) Introducing computer as a subject in early classes.
iii) Connecting students through YouTube and other online mediums to teach them about a modern world.
iv) If any new person is coming to use digital services in headquarters, people must cooperate him to teach how to use those services.
v) Government should promote sessions on services to the local citizens by organizing seminars and talking with them about benefits of using these services.
vi) Government should give some initial discounts on submitting bill and taxes through online by citizen him/herself so that they can start learning about it.
vii) Establishing some local centers for teaching -
· How to use computers?
· Why to use computers?
· What is website?
· How it can help anyone in developing?
· Why computers are necessary for next generation?
· Why people should use most from internet?
viii) Teaching them everything from scratch.
ix) Motivating them to change with the digitalization.
x) Helping them to connect with doctors, field experts, teachers, scientists through online.
xi) Organizing more number of webinars such that it can be broadcast to any number of regions at a time.
xii) Realizing them power of internet.
By following from these last steps I had discussed Indian vision of “Digital India“ will not only be success but it will change the future of the whole country. In this article I presented most of the points related to rural India as still 70% population still lives in rural areas so empowering them means empowering nation. Smart cities can be developed but in my point of view with each smart city a small village should also develop.
To transform the country and accelerating “Digital India” vision, many of the private big companies are working hand to hand. I thank them all for making it on the large scale. I as an Indian citizen will be happy to see -
· Digitalization of work in the office for removing employee’s day to day problems.
· Digitalization of agriculture and local business for getting their true value in the market.
· Digitalization of school and colleges for educating students in what they are capable of.
· Digitalization of hospitals for the local citizen so that they cannot lost a life because doctor’s prescription was unavailable.
· Digitalization of every panchayat, tahsil, district, state police stations such that country will be free from crimes under the custody of cameras and police serving 24*7.
· Digitalization of every possible service so that people should not take their day off for every single government work in their life.
I thank INTEL (http://www.intel.in/ ) for supporting #DigitalIndia Vision .
Refrences:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_India