 "payments, smartpones, digital, apps, finance, fintech")
Digital India was envisaged as an umbrella scheme that covered many aspects of making India a digital-first society. The initial outlay was Rs 100,000 crore in ongoing schemes and Rs 13,000 crore in new schemes. Here is a look at how the scheme has fared so far:
Broadband Connectivity
- 156,000 of the target of 250,000 village panchayats have been connected with broadband
- Cabinet has approved public private partnership mode for the roll-out of BharatNet project for broadband services in villages
- PM Modi has set a target of connecting 600,000 villages via broadband by May 2023
Universal access to mobile connectivity
- Reliance Jio’s entry in 2016 helped drive the adoption of digital content and services by rationalising mobile data costs
- Total Internet subscribers in India in January-June 2020 were 749.07 million
Public internet access
- Aim to set up 250,000 common service centres, or one CSC in each gram panchayat
- Over 400,000 CSCs operational
e-Governance
- DigiLocker: 66.37 million registered users, 4.32 billion issued authentic documents
- Pandemic sped up digital services use
- UMANG app (aggregates major govt services): 1,219 central & state govt services, 1,679.1 million department transactions, 253 departments integrated
Electronics manufacturing
- India imported electronic components of Rs 1.15 trillion in FY20, 37% came from China
- India’s PLI schemes, launched last year, aim to cut some of this
IT for jobs
- India BPO Promotion Scheme has generated direct jobs for more than 40,000 people residing in tier II and III cities
- 38% of these are women
- India IT industry added 138,000 people in FY21
Sources: Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, DigiLocker Website, Nasscom
