Smart sarkar plans giant leap from illiteracy to digital literacy

Bill for targeted delivery of subsidies using Aadhaar to be introduced in the current session

From promoting digital literacy to digitising various government functions, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, in his third Union Budget, took various steps to make Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 'Digital India' dream a reality.

The government has set aside Rs 2,059 crore for Digital India Programme - e-learning, e-panchayat and land records modernisation. The FM allocated Rs 24,543.48 crore to ministry of telecommunication and information technology.


Jaitley allocated Rs 150 crore for modernisation of land records. "Modernisation of land records is critical for dispute-free titles.

The National Land Record Modernisation Programme has been revamped under the Digital India initiative," he said.

The government will also introduce a Bill for targeted-delivery of financial and other subsidies, benefits and services by using the Aadhaar framework. The Bill will be introduced in the current session of the Parliament. The Aadhaar number or authentication shall not, however, confer any right of citizenship or domicile. A social security platform will be developed using Aadhaar to accurately target beneficiaries.

Nandan Nilekani, former chairman of Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), and co-founder of Infosys said it is good that the government is bringing in the statutory support for Aadhaar.

"If you look at the fine print, you will find that many of the applications they are proposing will all use Aadhaar. It is vindication of what has been done. They are extending Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) to liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and from LPG to fertiliser, and then they are going to automate 300,000 public distribution system (PDS) outlets which will again use Aadhaar-based authentication," Nilekani said.

He said the government is giving emphasis to good governance, with special focus on process reforms and IT-enabled government processes. The idea is to remove the irritants for public in their interface with government agencies.

Also, the government is planning to go ahead with its digital literacy campaign under two schemes. "We have already approved two schemes to promote digital literacy - National Digital Literacy Mission; and Digital Saksharta Abhiyan (DISHA). We now plan to launch a new Digital Literacy Mission Scheme for rural India to cover around 60 million additional households within the next three years. Details of this scheme will be spelt out separately," said Jaitley.

According to the government, of the 168 million rural households as many as 120 million do not have computers and are unlikely to have digitally literate persons. The government also plans to digitise the income tax (I-T) department to keep a track on tax evaders. A pilot was run in 2015-16 for e-assessment to obviate the requirement for tax payers to visit income-tax offices.

The government proposes to expand the scope of e-assessments to all assessees in seven mega cities in the coming years. The cases selected, will be scrutinised in e-environment and there will be no face-to-face contact of I-T department. I-T department will also fully expand the pilot initiative of 'e-Sahyog' with a view to reduce compliance cost, especially for small taxpayers.

The objective of the 'e-Sahyog' pilot project is to provide an online mechanism to resolve mismatches in income tax returns, without requiring taxpayers to attend the income tax office.

The government is also planning to set up a Digital Depository for academic certificates on the pattern of Securities Depository.

The move will not only help in getting the certificates authenticated in a time-bound manner by the employer or respective educational institutes which normally take 15 days to two months currently, but also help in weeding out fake certificates.