As the year 2022 is drawing to a close, the Ministry of Electronics & IT  has come up with a list of priorities under its ambitious programme Digital India. Among them are: governance and services on demand, digital citizen empowerment, and digital infrastructure as a vital utility for every citizen.

Digital India serves as an umbrella for numerous initiatives from various Central ministries/departments, as well as from states and Union Territories (UTs).

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By guaranteeing digital access, inclusion, empowerment, and closing the digital gap, the government of India has implemented the Digital India programme with the goal of converting India into a society and economy built on knowledge.

Here are some initiatives undertaken by MeitY under Digital India programme across the country:

• 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 135.5 crore residents have been enrolled.
• Common Services Centres – CSCs are offering government and business services in digital mode in rural areas through Village Level Entrepreneurs (VLEs). Over 400 digital services are being offered by these CSCs. So far, 5.21 Lakh CSCs are functional (including urban & rural areas) across the country, out of which, 4.14 Lakh CSCs are functional at Gram Panchayat level. There are 23,035 CSCs functional in the State of Rajasthan, out of which 18823 CSCs are functional at the Gram Panchayat level.
• DigiLocker: Digital Locker provides an ecosystem with a collection of repositories and gateways for issuers to upload the documents in the digital repositories. Digital Locker has more than 13.7 crore users and more than 562 crore documents are made available through DigiLocker from 2,311 issuer organisations.
• Unified Mobile Application for New-age Governance (UMANG) – for providing government services to citizens through mobile. More than 1668 e-Services and over 20,197 bill payment services are made available at UMANG.

Digital Village: MeitY has also initiated the ’Digital Village Pilot Project” in October, 2018. 700 Gram Panchayats (GPs)/Village with at least one Gram Panchayat/Village per District per State/UT are being covered under the project. The digital services being offered are Digital Health Services, Education Service, Financial Services, Skill Development, Solar panel powered street lights including Government to Citizens Services (G2C), Business to Citizen (B2C) Services.

• Open Government Data Platform– To facilitate data sharing and promote innovation over non-personal data, Open Government Data platform has been developed. More than 5.93 lakh datasets across 12,940+ catalogues are published. The platform has facilitated 94.8 lakh downloads.
• eHospital/ Online Registration System (ORS): e-Hospital application is the Hospital Management Information System for internal workflows and processes of hospitals. Currently, 753 Hospitals have been on-boarded on e-Hospital and ORS has been adopted by 557 hospitals across the country with over 68 lakh appointments booked from ORS.

• CO-WIN – It is an open platform for management of registration, appointment scheduling & managing vaccination certificates for Covid-19. It has registered 110 crore persons and has facilitated administration of 220 crore doses of vaccinations.
• Jeevan Pramaan: Jeevan Pramaan envisages to digitise the whole process of securing the life certificate for Pensioner. With this initiative, the pensioner is no longer required to physically present himself or herself in front of a disbursing agency or the certification authority. Over 685.42lakh Digital Life certificates have been processed since 2014.

• Pradhan Mantri Gramin Digital Saksharta Abhiyaan (PMGDISHA): The Government has approved a new scheme titled “Pradhan Mantri Gramin Digital Saksharta Abhiyan (PMGDISHA)” to usher in digital literacy in rural India by covering 6 Crore rural households (one person per household). It has 6.63 crore registered candidates and out of this, 5.69 crore candidates have been trained and 4.22 crore have been certified.
• Unified Payment Interface (UPI) is the leading digital payment platform. It has boarded 376 banks and has facilitated 730 crore transactions (by volume) worth Rs 11.9 lakh crore.
• Cyber Security: The Government has taken necessary measures to tackle challenges with regard to data privacy and data security through administering the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000 which has necessary provisions for data privacy and data security. India has made it to the top 10 in Global Cyber security Index (GCI) 2020 launched by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) on June 29, 2021, moving up 37 places to rank as the tenth best country in the world on key cyber safety parameters.
•  Modified Special Incentive Package (M-SIPS): As on date, 315 applications with proposed investment of approximately Rs. 85,632 crore have been approved.

Electronic Manufacturing Clusters (EMC): Under EMC scheme, 19 Greenfield EMCs and3 Common Facility Centres (CFCs) measuring an area of 3,464 acres with project cost ofRs. 3,732 crore including Government Grant-in-aid of Rs. 1,529 crore have been approved in 15 states across the country. Based on closure of receipt of applications under EMC scheme, MeitY notified Modified Electronics Manufacturing Clusters (EMC 2.0) Scheme on 1st April, 2020 for further strengthening the infrastructure base for electronics industry in the country and deepening the electronics value chain.

(inputs from PIB)