On Thursday, while speaking at an event to mark the sixth anniversary of the Digital India programme, Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed that the government’s flagship Digital India mission along with numerous opportunities available to the country in terms of data and demographics dividened, could make the next decade one of technological growth. Digital India Programme was launched in July 2015.
Digital India Programme is one of the marquee programme for the first as well as the second term of the government. It is a set of initiative put forward to encourage the uptake of services and commerce over the internet. The Prime Minister added that the gains from these initiatives will further emerge as India bridges the gap between government services and people’s access to them. He further expressed that this initiative brings in a massive opportunity for India. “Together we will be successful in making this decade India’s techade”, encouraged the Prime Minister.
He also asserted that the Digital India mission has enabled the implementation of one nation, on ration card scheme and helped to ease access to services for millions of people during the COVID-19 pandemic. While interacting with the benificiaries of Digital India schemes, Narendra Modi said that the direct benefit transfer helped send money to the crores of people. He added that at the time when the developed countries were unable to send aid to their citizen due to the lockdown, India was able to send thousands of crores of rupees directly to the bank account of the people.
The Supreme Court ordered all the states and Union territories to implement ” One Nation, One Ration Card” by 31 July on Tuesday. The initiative is proposed as a crucial technology driven solution at the time when the rural migrants were at their workplaces due to the COVID-19 lockdown.
Experts suggested that Digital India have played a pivotal role in strengthening the country’s fintech sector and involving more people into the financial system. Asia -Pacific policy director at Access Now, Raman Chima voiced that the government’s focus on trying to get so much of India digitized is laudable. He also notified that the government too needs to focus on protecting Indians data rights as well.
