Saturday, October 04, 2014: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s one more progressive initiative after ‘Make in India’ programme and Clean India mission is Digital India project and it’s the next in his government’s priority list. Digital India is also supposed to be launched amid huge fanfare next month.
The project, with an estimated cost of Rs 10,00,000 million, is aimed at reaching government services to nationwide citizens electronically to help them know everything about latest developments in the country and gain benefits from latest information and communication technology. The rural India will be covered by Internet connectivity at high-speed and lower rates. The project will be monitored by Modi himself and it’s expected to be finished by 2019. Modi also discussed this initiative during his recently concluded U.S. visit and global tech tycoon IBM has showed keen interest to take part in the project.
Several ideas are being played upon to make this project successful and when the project will be launched, Modi himself will get connected to around 1,000 gram panchayats across the country. Modi will detail the panchayats about the importance of the project. The government has set a target of providing broadband connectivity to around 0.25 million villages and most schools will be Wi-Fi enabled by 2019. Digital India project will also focus on e-governance which means government services will be available on Internet as well as mobile platforms. The mission targets to make 0.1 million people digitally literate by end of 2015.
The nine pillars of the project are broadband highways, mobile connectivity, Public Internet Access, e-governance, ekranti (to give electronic delivery of services), information for all, electronics manufacturing, IT for jobs and early harvest programmes. Under this programme, all projects of central government will be delivered to public through ICT like health services etc.
