• Background

India is known today as the source of the next million Internet users. With such a high participation in the digital future on the world, policies and projects need to be in place which can manage and satisfy the increasing demand for digital solutions. Addressing this issue is the main objective of the Digital India programme. The project envisions that every citizen shall have the knowledge and resources required to leverage the digital medium to access sources of knowledge, economic opportunities, services, and governance.

The Digital India programme consists of a number of initiatives. The National Optic Fibre Network lays a physical network spanning across the country to connect village administrations to the Internet and also to help them provide e-Governance services to the citizens in the area.

National Digital Literacy Mission has trained 8.2 million persons, half of them women. The ‘Pradhan Mantri Gramin Digital Saksharta Abhiyan’ (PMGDISHA) is slated to cover 60 million rural households wherein one person per household would be trained on digital literacy by 31.03.2019. The training includes capacity building on using the various options for making an electronic payments using mobiles.

• Some successful projects relevant to the thematic focus of your session

 Vision for WSIS Beyond 2015, towards 2025

The Government has facilitated opening of 300 million Jan Dhan Bank accounts. These accounts have a cumulative balance of to close to US $10 Billion, which shows that these accounts are being actively used by the beneficiaries. These accounts are used for initiatives such as the ‘DBT - Direct Benefit Transfers’, covering 338.6 million beneficiaries in around 100 schemes of the Government to transfer the funds directly to the beneficiaries account thus eliminating any intermediaries. Savings accrued due to use of DBT over the last 3 years has touched $ 7.51 billion.

‘Common Services Centres’, known as CSCs, have been set up primarily in rural India to drive digital inclusion, entrepreneurship, digital services and productivity across rural India’s grassroots, empowering India’s underprivileged citizens. These CSCs are managed by village-based entrepreneurs. CSCs provide citizen-centric services in electronic mode in rural areas. Around 0.25 million such CSCs exist in the country and host more than 2,500 G2C and B2C services to the citizens. The CSCs are also leveraged to conduct awareness sessions for the promotion of digital payment amongst rural citizens. They have trained more than 20 million rural population and 2.5 million merchants from rural India.

There have been innovative and indigenous ICT solutions using mobiles for enabling e-payments. Digital payments are being promoted through multiple platforms such as AADHAR Pay, Unified Payment Interface (UPI), Immediate Payment Service (IMPS) and e-wallets, in addition to debit/credit cards. The Government has launched a mobile app named ‘Bharat Interface for Money’ (BHIM) for facilitating electronic payments to bank accounts not only through smartphones but also feature phones.

We aim to have established a comprehensive system for all kinds of digital services in the coming years. The basic facilities would then be available to every citizen. Towards WSIS 2025, we expect the focus to be on increasing awareness and reducing inequality by means of the services provided.