Government of India launched the Digital India mission last year, in order to create a “digitally empowered society and knowledge based economy”, using Internet and Technology as a catalyst.
Government of India launched the Digital India mission last year, in order to create a “digitally empowered society and knowledge based economy”, using Internet and Technology as a catalyst.
Focusing on the core values of eGovernance, Digital India mission is India’s biggest and massive push for usage of Internet to solve major problems which our nation faces right now.
Digital India: Empowering Citizens With Technology
Digital India’s one of the most important missions is to spread the usage of Internet and Broadband across every nook and corner of the country. Government has already announced a budget of Rs 20,000 crore to connect 250,000 villages across India with high speed Internet using broadband technology.
National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN), which has now been renamed as BharatNet, has already connected 20,000 villages with Internet, and the process is still on.
By enabling Internet access in deep rural pockets of India, the Government is actually empowering the citizens with technology, which will help them to fight poverty and malnutrition is a better way.
Knowledge and Information translates to power; and when it comes to agriculture based economy, then its actually a boon for them. Farmers are able to get the best price of their products, they are able to locate the best traders and have the knowledge of best practices of farming.
Fighting Poverty & Malnutrition With Technology
Digital India mission has enabled more than Rs 2.5 lakh crore worth of investments in various sectors, across the country. When such high value investments and development plans are executed, then the ripple effect goes deep within the lower-sections of the society – more jobs are created, more opportunities arises, and more money comes into the eco-system.
As we have seen in the last 50 years, announcing thousands of crores of budget to fight poverty and malnutrition has not been able to solve the problem from its roots. With rampant corruption within the system, more than 70-80% of these allocated budgets goes into the wrong hands; and the actual benefactor gets almost nothing.
Instead of giving them direct assistance, which often fails to achieve its purpose, Digital India mission is enabling more investments, more industries, and more knowledge based economies so fight poverty, as thousands of crores of funds have been indirectly seeped into the system.
Digital India: Enabler of Change
It’s the change which can remove poverty and malnutrition from the country; and Digital India is introducing that change in a subtle manner.
For example, in the remove Akodara village in Gujarat (which is India’s first and only Digital Village), Digital India has enabled complete cash-less environment in the village, where villagers are able to buy and sell products using mobile banking. When farmers get their payments directly into their bank accounts, then it helps them to save and organize their funds optimally, and enable them to be self-reliant.
In the same village, Digital India has enabled the villagers to get the best price of their agricultural products, to get instant medical assistance using Internet-powered video conferences, and students are able to study from leading Universities without moving out of their village.
Using Digital India, states like Kerala has already achieved 100% mobile literacy; Andhra Pradesh has implemented complete eGovernance and talukas and villages in Gujarat are getting high speed broadband Internet.
Such a wide scale change, using Digital India is not only helping the Government to remove poverty and malnutrition, but also enabling them to become self-reliant, self-employed and Digitally empowered to solve all their problems.
Conclusion: It would be unfair to segregate poverty and malnutrition from Digital India; as both of these issues are part of a larger problem, which Internet and Technology aims to solve in the country.
The question is not exactly which should be handled first; the question is how can Digital India be used solve poverty and malnutrition in the country. And going by the success of this mission till date, it seems that we are on the right track.
Digital India converts to a Successful India.
