A more robust Digital India 2.0 to be unveiled soon

The government will soon unveil Digital India 2.0 with an aim to make India a trillion dollar digital economy.

Five strategic pillars have been identified for Digital 2.0, which will be an extension of the government's ambitious programme launched in its previous term.

The idea is to expand the reach of the earlier programmes to more number of people, bring in new technologies, connect people through internet and make India a truly digitally literate society.

The second leg of Digital India will be implemented through segments which include Digital Services, Digital Inclusion, Digital Economy, Digital Infrastructure and Digital Confidence.

Digital Services will involve setting up of Aadhaar Seva Kendras, platform for good public health, agriculture and education and leveraging existing digital assets such as DigiLocker, Aadhaar, UPI for enhanced service delivery and launch of next gen mobile service delivery – UMANG 2.0, according to a presentation prepared by the ministry of IT and electronics. The presentation was given to the minister of IT and electronics Ravi Shankar Prasad last week.

Digital Inclusion will be about digital literacy mission, expansion of common service centers (CSCs), strengthening and expanding of digital villages, while Digital Economy will be about electronics manufacturing, BPO 2.0 (work from home), national center for Artificial Intelligence and others. The other pillars include Digital Infrastructure – Digital India Infoway, national supercomputing mission, setting up of public WiFi hotspots and lastly, Digital Confidence which will be about bringing the personal data protection Bill and next generation cyber security in India. DNA Money has accessed a copy of the presentation.

A national mission on natural language translation will be part of Digital India 2.0. The mission with an outlay of Rs 450 crore is aimed at overcoming barriers across major Indian languages. The project will involve start-ups to build solutions.

Another important part of the new project will be reskilling people, mainly in digital literacy, which can be a huge employment generator. The new version of applications BHIM, which allow utility payments, mobile/wallet recharge and other related payments through UPI (unified payments interface), will also be launched.

Apart from this, the ministry of IT and electronics under Ravi Shankar Prasad has also prepared a 100-day action plan. Under this plan, the ministry plans to take Aadhaar Amendement Bill, Personal Data Protection Bill and IT Act Amendment Bill to the Cabinet for approval. Besides, approval of new schemes under the national policy on electronics and software products will also be finalised in the next 100 days. Aadhaar Seva Kendras will be set up in 10 cities and the proposal for setting up Digital India Infoway will also be formulated in the next 100 days, as per the plan of the ministry.

Digital India Infoway is setting up National Government Network (NGN) and National Knowledge Network 2.0 (NKN 2.0) over the next 10 years. The network will connect all state capitals, and has been designed to connect all schools, colleges, anganwadis as well as sectoral networks for health, education etc. This will be the backbone for ensuring internet resilience for India.

The earlier Digital India programme focused on providing broadband highways, universal access to mobile connectivity, public internet access, e-governance through technology and electronic delivery of services, among others. Digital economy, which includes social media, mobile analytics, cloud services, will be a significant contributor towards reaching the $1 trillion target. China is the global leader in this segment.