Digital India Week: Products and Projects Launched

Digital India Week: Products and Projects Launched

Question: PM Narendra Modi has recently launched the Digital India Week. Discuss the projects and products rolled out or ready for deployment as part of this technology initiative.

PM Modi has recently launched the Digital India Week during which several products and projects have been rolled out. These are as follows:

- Digital locker system for lessening the usage of physical documents and also enabling e-sharing through registered repositories

- MyGov.in, an online platform for encouraging citizen participation in governance through a Discuss, Do and Disseminate approach

- Swachh Bharat Mission mobile app for attaining the goals set by this mission

- e-Sign framework to enable citizens to sign documents digitally online using Aadhaar

- e-Hospital system for critical healthcare services including online registration, fee payment, fixing of doctor’s appointments, checking availability of blood online and online diagnostics

- National Scholarship Portal for beneficiaries from submission to verification, sanction and disbursal of application

- Digitise India Platform for digitisation of records in the country on a massive scale to facilitate efficient service delivery to citizens

- Bharat Net programme which is a high speed digital highway connecting 250,000 gram panchayats in the nation. This is the largest rural broadband product using optical fibre in the world

- BSNL Next Generation Network for replacing 30 year old telephone exchanges to manage communication services such as voice, multimedia and data

- BSNL’s large scale deployment of wireless Wi-Fi hotspots across India

- Broadband Highway as a pillar of Digital India to resolve the connectivity issue while providing technologies to facilitate service delivery to citizens

- Outsourcing Policy for creating these centres in different NE states and smaller towns across the nation

- Electronics Development Fund for promoting innovation, product development and research for the creation of a resource pool within the nation as a self sustaining eco system of venture funds

- National Centre for Flexible Electronics for promoting research and innovation in the field of flexible electronics

- Centre of Excellence on Internet of Things as a joint initiative in PPP mode with government and private organisations such as NASSCOM

Facts and Stats

- The industry pledged 4.5 lakh crore towards Digital India

- Bharti Group announced INR 100,000 crore of investment over a span of the next 5 years for creating deeper infrastructure in rural and urban India as well as areas of e-health and e-education

- Reliance Chairman Mukesh Ambani announced investment of INR 250,000 crore to build a retail network of 1.5 lakh stores and set up a startup fund

- Reliance Jio will also work with manufacturers for made in India mobility devices

- Aditya Birla Group announced it will create infrastructure to the tune of USD 7 billion over the next 5 years in the following areas:

- Network rollout

- Building Broadband Network

- Investments in Wi-FI and mobile wallets

- Mobile based education and healthcare

- Creating digitally enabled townships in Mumbai suburbs

- Vedanta Group proposed investment of INR 40,000 crore for setting up a LCD panel fab unit to generate 50,000 jobs and lower electronic imports in India by 20%

- New policies such as the ESDM which will bring down imports to 0 by 2020, the EDF policy and the e-Governance policy were also proposed as part of the Digital India Week