Section: Development & Welfare
Title: Making Digital Rural India
Relevance: GS 2
Why has this article surfaced?
One of the major initiatives planned under Digital India includes connecting the rural areas with high-speed internet network.The task of connecting one lakh gram panchayat through high-speed optical fiber network has been completed under phase I of the BharatNet project which has enabled broadband access to over 20 crore rural Indians in about two lakh fifty thousand villages with 100 Mbps connection.
How high-speed network can help rural India?
High-speed internet network can solve many problems for rural India.
- It can definitely improve the quality of education as through internet people would be able to get access to the best quality study material.
- Another area where broadband connectivity would bring a transformational change is the rural healthcare. With lack of infrastructure and shortage of doctors, access to the internet would be a blessing for rural people. Through eHealth, they would be able to consult best possible doctors through video conferencing.
- With internet access, the farmers would be able to know the weather forecast and would be able to sow the crops accordingly. They would also be able to get their crops sold on the actual rate prevailing in the market.
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Digital India Initiative
- As part of Digital India initiative, the government will be focusing on the development of stable and secure infrastructure, digital literacy and delivering government services through digital mediums.
- Proliferation of low cost smartphones with internet connectivity in rural India would prove to be a game changer for the economy.
- To make India a digitally empowered nation, the government has decided to connect even the far-flung areas through the internet.
- While the overall Internet penetration in India is 33 per cent, it is only 16 per cent in the rural areas.
- BharatNet will enable the country to generate more employment opportunities, improve service delivery of key initiatives like (online e-gram panchayat services, e-governance, e-education, e-health, e-medicine, e-grievances, e-agriculture, e-citizen, etc).
Taking Blockchain to the next level
- The government has also shown its intent to explore the use of Blockchain technologies for establishing digital economy.
- Blockchain is a file system that creates blocks of transactions, called the distributed ledger in a multi-party system, where all parties have access to the ledger and know the nature of transactions in their chain.
- The use of this transformational technology is already been considered in the banking and insurance industries.
- Even the rural sector has a huge scope of transformation through Blockchain.
- With continuous increase in population and infrastructure development, land has become the most valuable asset for mankind. As land records in most Indian states are unstructured with uncertain ownership, cases of disputes are ever increasing which often end up in courts. With high level of illiteracy and poverty in rural areas of India, land disputes are even more common.
- Blockchain technology can create permanent public ledgers for all kinds of property/ land related transactions, making the database transparent and avoiding chances of duplicate records.
- When the land related transactions are on blockchain, all the parties involved – buyer, seller, broker, banks and the government can track the deal on real time basis.
Conclusion
As part of Digital India initiative, the government will be focusing on the development of stable and secure infrastructure, digital literacy and delivering government services through digital mediums. Proliferation of low cost smart phones, with internet connectivity in rural India would be a game changer for the economy. Not only education, healthcare and agriculture, there would be many other sectors that will get numerous benefits from broadband connection and WiFi hotspots.
