10 Initiatives Taken By the Government of India To Bridge The Digital Divide

With digitization, the internet has become a very important means of communication and information acquisition. This is evident from the fact that during a global pandemic like COVID-19 the task of providing administrative support to the affected people was being done effectively through the digital medium.

Apart from this, internet and digital services were used for shopping, monetary transactions, and education. However, this accentuated an underlying issue between urban and rural India - a digital divide.

What is it?

The Digital Divide, also known as the digital split, is a social issue referring to the gap that exists between individuals who have access to modern information and communication technology and those who don’t have the same privileges.

It represents the disparities between certain demographics and regions. This includes differences in social, economic levels or other categories over the use of Internet and communication technologies.

Despite the country being the largest growing user of internet services, vivid gaps exist. So, what has the government done to tackle this problem?

Here is a list of 10 initiatives -
1. In 2011, the BharatNet project was launched to connect 0.25 million panchayats through optical fibre (100 MBPS) and connect India’s villages.
2. In 2014, the government launched the National Digital Literacy Mission and the Digital Saksharta Abhiyan.
3. In 2017, the PM Gramin Digital Saksharta Abhiyan was launched to usher in digital literacy in rural India by covering 60 million households.
4. Seeing the importance of digital literacy, the Supreme Court of India has declared the right to access the Internet as a fundamental right, making it a part of the right to privacy and the right to an education that comes under Article 21 of the Constitution.
5. The National Education Policy (NEP), 2020. This aims at making “India a global knowledge superpower” by introducing several changes from the school to college level in the Indian education system with a special emphasis on digital education.
6. Internet Saathi Program – The Internet Saathi Program was launched in 2015 by Google India and Tata Trusts. This project aims to facilitate digital literacy among rural Indian women.
7. Optical Fibre Network (NOF-N), a project aimed to ensure broadband connectivity to over two lakh (200,000) gram panchayats of India.
8. DIKSHA (Digital Infrastructure for Knowledge Sharing) platform is the national platform for school education available for all states and the central government for grades 1 to 12 and was launched in September 2017. It is considered to be the ‘one nation; one digital platform’ for school education in India.
9. Unnati Project – Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (HPCL) strives to bridge the digital divide in schools by giving rural students with poor economic and social backgrounds access to computer education.
10. Digital Mobile Library was launched to bridge the digital divide, more effectively, by the government of India. The project was carried out in collaboration with the Centre for Advanced Computing (C–DAC) based in Pune.