Digital India campaign has its root from mid 1990 when central government of that time initiated the e-governance drive. India is huge country accommodate second largest population of this shrinking planet. Digitalization of such a huge nation is not an easy task. Several issues and factors like; literacy rate, Indian culture, awareness, basic infrastructure, willingness of stakeholders, adoption of new technology, economic conditions, governance, etc. get in the way of this journey. There are several advantages of digitalization like e-governance, transparency, reducing red tapism, availability of government services on finger tip at anytime from anywhere. Developed and most of the developing country citizens are enjoying these benefit for last many years. To make India global leader in the modern era, Indian citizen should benefited from digitalization. In this context, the importance of Digital India campaign has increased. So this is the time to review and analyze the Digital India campaign issues, challenges and its journey so far. This research paper attempt to explore the issues and challenges arises in transforming Digital India into a reality.
KEYWORDS: Digital India, Digitalization, E-governance, Demonetization, Vibrant India.
Introduction Digital India is an initiative taken by the new government under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on the 1 July 2015 with the inauguration of Digital Week in New Delhi. This journey not started from this very moment. It is an initiative taken by the government of India after the economic reforms of 1991. To make public services faster and making government department’s working transparent, Government of India at that time kick off a drive named e-governance. But due to several reasons like worst economic conditions, inadequate infrastructure and fund, various other more important thrust areas of public expenditure left the previous governments empty handed. Furthermore, the last term of United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government was in the state of policy and reform paralysis. Egovernance project of previous government could not achieve the result as expected in all government departments. After the fall of UPA regime at the centre, the new government under the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi took guard and start transforming the India into new and vibrant India. The new government took initiative to overhaul the e-governance project and with addition of some other objectives launched Digital India programme. The Digital India (DI) campaign is nothing but the transform version of e-governance.
Objectives
