(a): The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Government of India has initiated the ‘Digital India’ programme with the vision to transform India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy. The Digital India programme is centred on three key vision areas namely Digital Infrastructure as a Core Utility to Every Citizen, Governance and Services on Demand and Digital Empowerment of Citizens. Digital India aims to provide the much needed thrust to nine pillars of growth areas that is (i) Broadband Highways, (ii) Universal Access to Mobile Connectivity, (iii) Public Internet Access Programme, (iv) e-Governance – Reforming Government through Technology, (v) e-Kranti– Electronic delivery of services, (vi) Information for All, (vii) Electronics Manufacturing – Target NET ZERO Imports, (viii) IT for Jobs and (ix) Early Harvest Programmes.
(b): All States/UTs have already been covered under Digital India programme.
(c): Digital India is an umbrella programme that covers multiple projects of various Central Ministries/Departments & States/UTs. Each project has its own budgetary requirement and accordingly project-plan has been charted out by the implementing Ministry/Departments and budget details are being maintained by concerned Ministries/Departments & States/UTs. However, budget allocated and utilised by Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology under Digital India programme is as follows:
Financial Year Budget allocated
(Rs. in Crore) Actual Expenditure
(Rs. in Crore)
2015-16 1550.80 1452.70
2016-17 1244.93 1217.65
2017-18 1413.63 1407.19
2018-19 3339.73 3328.57
(d): The present status of some of the key initiatives undertaken under Digital India programme is as follows:
• BharatNet: BharatNet is an ambitious initiative to trigger a broadband revolution in rural areas. This project is being implemented by Department of Telecommunications. BharatNet aims to connect all the 2,50,000 Gram Panchayats in the country and provide 100 Mbps connectivity to all gram panchayats (GPs). 3,37,515 Kms optical fiber has been laid connecting 1,28,870 Gram Panchayats. 1,19,513 Gram Panchayats are ready for service.
• Aadhaar: Aadhaar provides 12 digit biometric and demographic based identity that is unique, lifelong, online and authenticable. Further to give statutory backing to Aadhaar ‘The Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016’ was notified on 26th March 2016. Over 123+ crore residents have been enrolled.
• Common Services Centre (CSC): The Common Services Centres, which are kiosks for delivery of G2C Services, are being opened at each of 2,50,000 Gram Panchayats(GP). So far, 3.65 Lakh Common Services Centre are functional and are providing eServices; Out of this, 2.64 lakh are at GP level. Along with other services, CSCs are providing services related to Banking and Finance to rural citizens. Over 300 digital services are being offered by these CSCs.
• Meghraj and CSP: As part of the Digital India program, Government of India embarked upon an ambitious initiative known as MeghRaj, to utilize and harness the benefits of Cloud Computing. To fast track the adoption of cloud computing MeitY, Government of India has empanelled cloud service offerings of the 13 Cloud Service Providers under different deployment models viz. Public Cloud, Virtual Private Cloud and Government Community Cloud.
• Digital locker: Digital Locker provides an ecosystem with collection of repositories and gateways for issuers to upload the documents in the digital repositories. So far, 2.37 crore registered user of DigiLocker. 352 crore authentic documents have been issued. 126 Issuers and 36 Requestor organizations have been on-boarded.
• Open Govt. Data Platform: Open Government Data (OGD) Platform is a platform for supporting Open Data initiative of Government of India. It intends to increase transparency in the functioning of Government and also open avenues for many more innovative usages of Government Data to give different perspective. Currently, 294,464 resources under 4,767 catalogs published by 148 Ministries/Departments (85 Central and 63 States/UTs Departments).
• eTaal: eTaal is a web portal for dissemination of e-Transactions statistics of National and State level e-Governance Projects including Mission Mode Projects. It receives transaction statistics from web based applications periodically on near real time basis. More than 1454 crore transactions have been recorded for 3,702 services since January 2019.
• Government e-Market Place (GeM): To facilitate on line procurement of Goods & Services required by various Government Departments / Organizations / PSUs, Government e-Marketplace (GeM) has been implemented. GeM will enhance transparency, efficiency and speed in public procurement. Presently, GeM is being used by various Departments/Ministries of Central Govt and States/UTs. 2,42,388 Sellers and Services providers are registered on the portal. Also others Services are registered namely Transport, Scanning/Digitization, IT Manpower, FMS etc. There are 10,25,319 Products and 11,279+ Services are available on the portal.
• e-District Mission Mode Project (MMP) has been implemented at district and sub-district levels of all States/UTs, benefitting all citizens by delivering various e-Services such as Certificates (Birth, Caste, Death, Income and Local Resident), Pension (Old Age, Disability and Widow), Grievance Redressal, Electoral, Consumer Court, Revenue Court, Land Record and services of various departments such as Commercial Tax, Agriculture, Animal Husbandry & Co-operative, Labour, Employment Training & Skill Development etc. e-District services have been launched in 721 districts across all States / UTs.
• Jeevan Pramaan: Digital Life Certificate for Pensioners scheme known as Jeevan Pramaan envisages to digitize the whole process of securing the life certificate. It is a biometric enabled digital service for pensioners. With this initiative, the pensioner is no more required to physically present himself or herself in front of disbursing agency or the certification authority. Over 2.58 crore Digital Life certificates have been processed since 2014.
• Online Registration System(ORS)/eHospital: Online Registration System (ORS) under eHospital includes online appointment and registration by new patients, viewing of lab reports, checking the status of blood availability and integration with payment gateway (PayGov). Till date, 25.53 lakh online appointments have been made in 205 Hospitals through ORS.
• National Scholarship Portal: National Scholarships Portal (NSP) has been developed as a one-stop solution to implement end-to-end disbursement of the scholarship to the beneficiaries. The process includes student registration, application, approval and disbursement. Over 1.40 crore applications have been submitted. There are 60 registered schemes from 14 Ministries/Departments.
• NCOG- GIS Applications: National Centre of Geo-informatics (NCoG) project, is a GIS platform developed for sharing, collaboration, location based analytics and decision support system for Departments. So far, 230 applications across various domains are operational.
• Unified Mobile Application for New-Age Governance (UMANG): UMANG has been developed as a single mobile platform to deliver major Government services with Core Platform integrated with Aadhaar, DigiLocker, PayGov, Rapid Assessment System (RAS) etc. About 362 services from 73 departments and 18 States are already available on UMANG and the count is increasing day by day.
• MyGov: MyGov is a first-of-its-kind citizen engagement platform for participatory governance in India. MyGov aims to facilitate a dialogue between citizens and Government, bringing citizens closer to the Government and bringing the Government closer to the citizens it serves, via this platform. Presently, over 80 lakh users are registered with MyGov, participating in various activities hosted on MyGov platform. MyGov activities are structured under 64 groups consisting of 813 tasks, 800 discussions, 263 Polls/Surveys and 184 talks.
• National Digital Literacy Mission (NDLM)/Digital Saksharta Abhiyan (DISHA): Government of India has implemented two Schemes for digital literacy namely ‘National Digital Literacy Mission’ (NDLM) with a target of training 10 lakh persons and Digital Saksharta Abhiyan (DISHA) with a target of 42.5 lakh persons covering one person per family. These schemes were implemented concurrently across the country and a total of 53.67 lakh candidates have been trained and certified.
• Pradhan Mantri Gramin Digital Saksharta Abhiyaan(PMGDISHA): The Government has approved a new scheme titled “Pradhan Mantri Gramin Digital Saksharta Abhiyan (PMGDISHA)” in February, 2017 to usher in digital literacy in rural India by covering 6 Crore rural households (one person per household). As on 20th June, 2019, a total of 2.11 crore candidates have been trained under PMGDISHA scheme, out of which more than 1.33 crore candidates have been certified.
? IT for Jobs
• 48,300 seats have been approved under India BPO scheme and over 45,480 BPO/ITeS seats operations distributed around 110 locations covering 20 States and 2 UTs.
• 5000 seats have been approved for BPOs in North East and 2,485 seats have been allocated across 6 States of NER.
? Electronics Manufacturing
• Modified Special Incentive Package (M-SIPS): 201 applications with proposed investment of approximately Rs. 52,083 crore have been approved; 20 applications with proposed investments of approximately Rs. 5,048 crore have been recommended by the Appraisal Committee for approval.
• Electronic Manufacturing Clusters (EMC): 23 applications (20 Greenfield EMCs and 3 Common Facility Centre in Brownfield EMCs) with project worth of Rs.3898 crore including Central Grant-in-aid of Rs.1577 crore for setting up of Electronics Manufacturing Clusters(EMC) have been accorded final approval in 15 states across the country.
(e): The primary challenges faced for implementation of Digital India programme are digital literacy and digital connectivity. Government has already taken necessary measures to tackle these challenges through implementing “Pradhan Mantri Gramin Digital Saksharta Abhiyan (PMGDISHA)” to usher in digital literacy in rural India with the objective of covering 6 crore rural households and BharatNet project with the aim to connect all 2,50,000 Gram Panchayats (GPs) in the country with 100 Mbps connectivity.
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