Between MyGov and Bharat Net, here are the highs and lows of Digital India

Schemes that address clear market demand have clicked; those that focus on behavioural change, not so much

The biometric collection of attendance records of government employees remains Delhi-centric almost five years after the scheme was rolled out. Just 2,33,994 employees are registered on the Aadhaar-enabled Biometric Attendance System (BAS) according to its website, less than 7 per cent of the total civilian employees employed by the Indian government. Almost no state uses it to track its employees’ attendance record.  

The BAS is part of this government’s agenda to leverage technology to ensure that its benefits accrue to large swathes of the population. Meant to usher in a behaviour change among government employees, it has clearly not travelled far.

The behaviour change that has taken off instead is the electronic payment system. In the past two years, it has become the most visible manifestation of the government’s Digital India programme. The platform-agnostic payment channels developed by National Payments Corporation of India has logged over Rs 2 trillion worth of transactions in December 2019, almost two thirds of India’s GDP. 

Few Indians might know the full form of acronyms such as NACH (National Automated Clearing House), which enables those high-volume interbank electronic transactions, or what BHIM (Bharat Interface for Money). Yet, they use it massively, often interchanging it with apps such as Google Pay or Paytm, all the while depending on just their mobile numbers and a Virtual Payment Address. It has been an explosive growth from an environment of just 35 banks recording a transaction value of just Rs 700 crore in December 2016.

Between the success of the electronic payments and the failure of the biometric attendance are ranged the story of the various technological thrusts tried by the Narendra Modi government over its five-and-a-half year spell. Of the 22 schemes that aim to “transform India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge-based economy” listed by the ministry of electronics and information technology, those that serve a clearly defined market, have scored. Those meant to make behavioural changes for which there are no clear markets to offer those improvements, have struggled to become viable.   

Consider Bharat Net. It is the plan to connect all the 2,50,000 gram panchayats with optical fibre cables to provide at least 100 Mbps connectivity. So far, 3,80,988 kms of the fibre has been laid out connecting more than half (1,40,668) of those gram panchayats. This connectivity can bring a host of benefits to the villages — except the villagers are not sold on the idea. 

They are far more comfortable tracking the same information on their mobiles, which explains why the data plans sold by the telecom companies are so hotly demanded. Data through wires to be brought by government agencies remains locked behind the doors of the panchayat offices. There are no takers. 

On the other hand, there are many takers for the Online Registration System (ORS) under e-Hospitals. Though this initiative has not attracted much publicity but 237 hospitals are already on board. It has cut down those long familiar queues in government hospitals. Of the 32,00,000 online appointments made till this week, more than 40 per cent of them for the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi. It is the most visible sign of progress for these patients just as the e-passport service has become for those higher up on the income ladder. 

At the other end is a bright idea like Digital Locker, which has not caught the popular imagination. It provides a means to store all documents of a person in a digital repository. So the person essentially carries around just a url. There are 32.3 million names registered with the Digilocker facility. Despite the impressive numbers, few universities or institutions remain satisfied with being shown the url. They still believe in the paper trail. 

In Modi’s first term, there was a technological innovation almost every month. Other than the list above, there has been Meghraj, to access the benefits of cloud computing, e-Taal, Digital Village, Soil Health Card, Pradhan Mantri Gramin Digital Saksharta Abhiyaan and Government e-Market Place (GeM). Many are still under trial. 

The reasons are clear. It is difficult to figure out for which markets these schemes aim to provide opportunities. So even though they are smartly conceived tools to ensure either digital access, digital inclusion, digital empowerment or bridge the digital divide, they remain mostly on paper. 

For instance the money available for Pradhan Mantri Gramin Digital Saksharta Abhiyan, a training programme to make over 60 million rural households digitally literate, is Rs 2351.38 crore, all states combined. The money actually spent was Rs 100 crore in 2017-18 and Rs 438 crore in 2018-19. There is no clear evidence for the rural population whether the training was linked to jobs.

This is the same reason that another related project meant to set up at least one Common Services Centre (CSC) in every gram panchayat has stuttered. These CSCs were to be operated by local entrepreneurs to provide eServices to rural citizens. As recently as October 2019, the government’s special purpose vehicle to run these centres, CSC e-Governance Services, is working on a pilot project to extend tele-medicine for Ayush ministry, through them. There are few takers for the 350 digital services each of these CSCs offer. Most people use the CSCs to download movies, instead. 

The stiffest challenge that would ultimately decide the fate of the government’s Digital India programme is tied with the fate of the National Policy on Electronics, announced a year ago in February 2019. Here, the market linkage is quite evident. According to data from October 2019, the government has approved 233 applications with an estimated investment of Rs 63,610 crore. To support those investments, there are plans for 23 electronic manufacturing clusters spanning 15 states. 

By Indian standards the money offered as grants in aid of Rs 1,577 crore to get these clusters going, is substantial. The policy regime such as automatic approval for 100 per cent FDI in the sector is one of most liberal by Indian standards. Will India emerge as one of the global hubs for electronics manufacturing? The results would not be in for at least another couple of years.