Relevance: GS-2 : Important Aspects of Governance, Transparency and Accountability, E-governance- applications, models, successes, limitations, and potential

Key Phrases: Digital diplomacy, UPI, digital divide

Why in news?

• India expected to overtake USA in total number of internet users

Analysis:

Status of India’s digital penetration

• Around 40% of India’s population accesses Internet
• There has been strong push due to digital India, UPI, e-governance
• India’s CoWIN platform is a unique fully digital vaccination portal

How digital access benefits people

• Access to financial services, positive implication-women globally reinvest about 90% of their income into their households as per a world bank study
• Activism and participation in campaigns against gender inequality – for example #MeToo helped generate awareness among women
• Access to information, connection and liberation-sensitive subjects like reproductive health, sex, religion
• Low female representation in emerging sectors of IT and services can change – for example work from home helps women employees retain their job
• Allows citizens to bypass lower bureaucracy
• Also ensures RTE, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly

What is Digital Divide?

• Unequal access to Internet and subsequently facilities like education, health, information impacting life chances
• Social and economic backwardness exacerbated due to it- government and private Infrastructure moving online
• 71st NSSO Survey on Education 2014, only 6% of rural households have a computer.'
• As per Deloitte report in mid-2016 digital literacy in India was less than 10 percent
• As per unified district info system for education plus suggests only 22% schools have access to internet while government schools at 11%
• In India only 29 percent users are female
• North-South, East-West divide: Southern states are more digitally literate that Northern counterpart. This is consistent with their traditional literacy also. For example, Digital divide is least in Kerala while worst in West Bengal.
• “Bharat-India” divide: While urban areas are more digitally literate, rural counterpart are lacking in the respective states. States which are more urbanised are generally more digitally literate and vice versa. About 70% of over one billion Indians live in rural areas, and only about 400 million have Internet access
• Linguistic Divide: More than 80% of the content on the Internet is in English, so states where people are more competent in English are more digitally competent.

What are Digital Public Goods?

• Digital Public Goods (DPG) are non-excludable and non-rivalrous.
• The UN defines DPGs as “Open source software, open data, open AI models, open standards and open content that adhere to privacy and other applicable international and domestic laws, standards and best practices, and do no harm, and help attain the SDGs [Sustainable Development Goals].
• For instance, District Health Information Software 2 (DHIS2) is a free and open source health management data platform used by multiple organisations, and a total 54 countries.
• The creation and promotion of digital public goods for the purpose of addressing rising concentration in digital markets, however, is a new phenomenon being witnessed in India.

Impact of Digital Divide

• Supreme Court has flagged the consequences of growing digital divide. It observed, the digital divide caused by online classes will defeat the fundamental right of every child to education
• Low female representation: Due to huge digital divide in gender, thousands of Indian girls in these far-flung areas are refused access to Information and Communications Technology (ICTs
• Non delivery of welfare schemes: As many schemes have started using ICT in their delivery, at the same time due to digital divide it will create more problem.
• Denial to information/knowledge: This lack of equal opportunities to access online services and information deprive people of higher/quality education and skill training that could help them contribute to the economy and become leaders on a global level.
• Economic disparity is created between those who can afford the technology and those who don’t.
• Political empowerment and mobilisation in the age of social media is difficult when there is a digital divide.
• Transparency and accountability is less due to digital gap. For instance, it impacts delivery of services and good governance as well.

Government efforts

• CSC to provide digital government services in rural areas - takes spending of resources which could be avoided by digital literacy
• PCO like interface for public wifi to improve penetration in rural areas schemes PM WANI launched where anyone can start public wifi service
• National broadband mission-broadband access to all villages by 2022-30 lakh route km of optical fibre, increasing tower density from .42 to 1 per thousand by 2024-100 billion dollars investment through USOF
• 15 percent of total villages to be made digital villages by 2023 under CSC
• Pradhan Mantri Gramin Digital Saksharta Abhiyan (PMGDISHA) being initiated under Digital India Programme would cover 6 crore households in rural areas to make them digitally literate

Digital Diplomacy

• India is pioneering the concept of digital public goods that enhance the ease, transparency and speed with which individuals, markets and governments interact with each other.
• Built on the foundation of Aadhaar and India Stack, modular applications, big and small, are transforming the way we make payments, withdraw our PF, get our passport and driving licence and check land records
• Children have access to QR-coded textbooks across state boards and languages, the economically disadvantaged have access to the public distribution system and beneficiaries of government schemes have money transferred directly into their bank accounts
• There is an opportunity for India to embark on digital diplomacy- to take its made-in-India digital public goods to hundreds of emerging economies across the world. This could be a strategic and effective counter to China’s Belt and Road Initiative
• The cost of setting up an open source-based high school online educational infrastructure, to supplement the physical infrastructure, for an entire country is less than laying two kilometres of high-quality road
• Unlike physical infrastructure such as ports and roads, digital public goods have short gestation periods and immediate, and visible impact and benefits
• It eliminates ghost beneficiaries of government services, removes touts collecting rent, creates an audit trail, makes the individual-government-market interface transparent and provides efficiencies
• Benefits can be rapidly extended to cover a much larger portion of the population.
• Digital public goods infrastructure compounds while physical infrastructure depreciates
• India’s digital diplomacy will be beneficial to and welcomed by, all emerging economies from Peru to Polynesia, from Uruguay to Uganda, and from Kenya to Kazakhstan

Way ahead

• Meaningful collaborations with the private sector, technological innovations and following a consistent focused approach towards the larger objective are necessary.
• Utilisation of multiple modes of transactions such as Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD), Unified Payment Interface (UPI), Immediate Payment Service (IMPS), and Point-of-Sale (POS) machines, need to be strengthened.
• An empowered entity needs to be set up which is accountable for quality and timeliness to design and construct digital highways, their rural branches, and ensure their optimum utilisation by sharing the infrastructure
• The last mile delivery of services has to be made a reality and connectivity, devices and handholding assistance of trained persons at village service centres, schools and clinics is imperative.

Source: Indian Express