Digital India is a campaign that has the power to change and transform the future of India, with the caveat that it goes beyond being just a hashtag. It's meant to connect the government and the people but its impact and reach can be far more widespread.
First, it's a start to connect citizens to its government departments. Breaking barriers between those on both sides of table is key. Reducing paperwork is one thing but more important is the possibilities of community and citizen service.
Second, the idea of increasing reach of connectivity and internet has far reaching consequences. The world is going digital - not as a tool for chat or checkin - but for utilities and conveniences. If India through this campaign can connect across urban and rural India, collapse walls of communication and allow for free flow of information people can use in fields of medicine, blood donation, fund raising, it could be another revolution of sorts.
Just this past week I spoke at the 'Rise With Twitter' conference. We spoke about the massive outreach some social media can have - for example BlooddonorsIN is a handle connecting people in need of blood and thousands are benefiting from it. The needy are connected with the givers.
Third and very important is the power of digital India to be an equaliser within gender. Women can be massively empowered by the democratic and all pervasive nature of the digital medium. It's able to let men and women set up and grow businesses without discriminating on gender. Women entrepreneurs are taking over the digital space putting it to use by creating high quality content, e-commerce and other platforms.
Fourth, digital India can take the country away from exploring landline to mobile instead straight to digital. Like all campaigns it has some challenges but those shouldn't take precedence over the potential of the campaign.
We need to address issues of reach, bandwidth, scale and accessibility. And in the phase after look at rights and freedom of expression and so on. Perhaps it's worth the government working on multiple fronts from the word go rather than first think of creating infrastructure and then of the matters of rights, policy and expression.
Once an entire ecosystem of support and implementation is in place the infra will mature, and internet users will find reward in its growth. Central to Digital India will be a plan and policy to deal with cyber security to battle cyber attacks.
As the concept of going digital is a central to the idea of equality one must be patient while this initiative rolls out. As India look at democratisation of information, it's an exercise that has to work at all levels with openness, accessibility, connectivity, networking, exchange and mutual understanding and maturity. And like all democracy participation from a quarters is at the heart of its success.
Source :-http://www.dnaindia.com
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