This month marks a decade of Digital India, the flagship programme encompassing India’s digital public infrastructure. The programme has a dozen odd umbrella sections, each with its own specialised schemes to reach every citizen and nook and cranny of the country.
Launched on 1st July 2015, the idea behind Digital India was simple: many, if not most, services in a vast country could be provided physically. If a road does not exist, then create a “digital road” to reach the very last citizen living in India’s far-flung regions.
Political doubts and a journey
The journey was not without its doubters. Less than two years after Digital India was started, former Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram spoke in Parliament about the “false picture” that was being created in the name of Digital India.He questioned how would a poor lady, buying potatoes and tomatoes, pay using her credit card. Does she have a credit card? Is her place connected to the internet? and more such questions were raised.
The UPI surge
By that time, the digital bus had already left its station. A year before Chidambaram spoke, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) launched the Unified Payment Interface (UPI), an instant payment system and a protocol that has since revolutionised payments in India.
In 2016, daily UPI payments numbered in hundreds. By 2018, the number crossed one million transactions per day. Two years later, in 2020, the number crossed 100 million daily transactions and by 2024, the number was in excess of 500 million daily transactions. The one billion transactions per day mark is not far off.
Digital India, beyond UPI
But UPI is only one among a large number of Digital India platforms even if it is the best known. A much less appreciated but a valuable programme is e-Sanjeevani, the telemedicine services that allows OPD consultations directly between doctors and patients across 36 states and Union Territories.
There is an option for assisted telemedicine as well that enables consultations between specialist doctors and grassroots medical practitioners as well.
What worked
The starting point for India’s digital journey was providing a unique identification to all Indians irrespective of where they lived. It was a gargantuan exercise but one that began with numerous political hiccups. For starters last mile services could not be delivered to any individual unless he/she could be identified.
The alternative was to allow the system to continue as before: rations meant for the poor could be stolen and diverted while on paper they were delivered to the person for whom they were intended.
This led to a polarised and bruising debate about the right to privacy and data protection. But it was a strange debate: no questions were asked when large companies made extensive use of the vast troves of data they had gathered but the government was considered a threat.
In the event the debate died even as ever growing number of people continued to benefit from the vast backbone of digital public infrastructure that was being laid down across India.
Digital India: The COVID test
The first major, and unprecedented, test for Digital India came when the Covid19 pandemic hit India. After the first few months, beginning April 2020, when the emphasis was on ensuring the supply of food and transport for workers across the country, the question of rolling out of vaccines to check Covid19 became paramount.
India had a history of successful vaccination campaigns but there was no instance of a country-wide vaccination programme in the middle of a pandemic. The scale was mind boggling: A billion plus population was to be given the vaccine and then had to be issued certificates for the vaccine. Follow up checks, monitoring and other medical options, too, had to be considered.By 19th April, 2023, two years and three months after the vaccine rollout began, 2.21 doses had been administered and everyone who had been given a shot had a certificate of the first, second and precautionary doses administered.
The task was a shining example of Digital India’s success. Its COWIN platform, delivered a seamless experience of getting a vital medical supply to more than a billion people.
Again, this was made possible because of a unique identity system that allowed tagging of hundreds of millions of individuals. Had “privacy” been allowed to become an issue, probably the vaccines could not have been delivered in time, if at all.
Digital India: The future
This is just the start for Digital India. Another, less known, programme—the Pradhan Mantri Gramin Digital Saksharta Abhiyan (PMGDISHA)—seeks to impart digital education to at least one member in every rural household.
The idea is to teach one person per family how to run digital devices and perform simple tasks such as sending and receiving emails. These tasks look mundane. But the idea is anything but boring. It is a journey to empower more than a billion people and make their lives easier.
This article was written by Siddharth Singh, OPEN Magazine. You can read more of his work here: https://openthemagazine.com/author/siddharth-singh/
