Four years of Modi: Digital India catches up, but cybersecurity a hurdle

The sixth and last part of the series on flagship programmes analyses how internet governance is making a difference.

Two years ago, applying for a government job from Ramghat, a small village in the Papum Pare district of Arunachal Pradesh, was an arduous process. The applicant had to go to the capital Itanagar which is 20km away, find a cyber-café, download the application form, fill it in and submit it then and there.
 

Cut to 2018. Today, Ramghat not only has internet connectivity, but there is also an internet café set up by some enterprising villagers who bought a few computers from an e-commerce site. Now no one has to trudge to Itanagar to get work done online.

Or, take the case of Sreenath K, who used to job as a porter at Ernakulam Junction railway station in Kerala. Sreenath used the free WiFi service at the station to prepare for the Kerala Public Service Commission exam, which he cracked recently. The free WiFi ended up transforming his life.
 

These are just two examples of the ways in which BharatNet and Digital India, the internet-for-all programmes of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, are making a difference to people’s lives. 
 

The BharatNet programme aims to bring high-speed broadband connectivity to 250,000 gram panchayats covering nearly 625,000 villages at a budgetary outlay of Rs 340 billion. Under the programme, a total of 274,912 km of optical fibre has been laid till May 20 this year. Clearly, the project has got momentum now — the government is laying 666 km of optical fibre per week. If everything goes according to plan, the internet-for-all initiative would be one of the crowning achievements of the Modi government.
 

That said, there have been some downsides to the government’s overarching Digital India project. Experts say that in the race to extend the country’s internet infrastructure and e-governance and make India internet savvy, issues such as cybersecurity, public data safety and so on have been put on the back burner.

The story so far
 

The road to connecting villages with high-speed internet was somewhat bumpy in the early stages of Phase-I of the BharatNet programme. While optical fibre cables (OFC) were laid in many areas, the GPON (Gigabit Passive Optical Network) equipment needed for powering the internet was often not available. According to government sources, the problem was solved after fresh tenders were floated. “Things were back on track after fresh tenders were floated and the equipment was brought in. By December 31, 2017, we were able to connect 107,743 places in 29 states,” said a senior government official. 
 

Under the Digital India initiative, till February this year, 292,481 Common Services Centres (CSCs), which are facilities for delivering e-governance services in rural and remote areas, were operational across the country. Out of these, 183,184 CSCs have been created at the gram panchayat level.
 

Another achievement of the Digital India project has been the direct benefits transfers. An amount totalling more than Rs 3.44 trillion has been electronically transferred into the bank accounts of beneficiaries. Under the National Digital Literacy Mission or the Digital Saksharta Abhiyan (NDLM/DISHA), over 536,7000 people have been made digitally literate. To push for digital literacy in rural areas, the government also launched the Pradhan Mantri Gramin Digital Saksharata Abhiyan (PMGDISHA) in 

October, 2017.  
 

“In the last four years there has been a significant increase in the adoption of digital initiatives,” said Arvind Singhal, chairman and managing director, Technopak. “Applications of Aadhaar and the UPI payment numbers show that they are gaining ground. Digital India also meant bringing a variety of public services on to the digital platform — a high degree of adoption has happened there. As for BharatNet, a lot of progress has been made in the last 12 months,” he added.
 

  In January this year, telecom minister Manoj Sinha said that Phase-2 of BharatNet, which is projected to bring broadband connectivity to 150,000 gram panchayats, will be completed by December 2018, which is well ahead of the stated deadline of March 2019.
 

Piggybacking on big tech
 

Ever since its launch in 2015, US technology giants Facebook and Google have played a major role in furthering the government’s Digital India programme. From educating people about the internet to connecting far flung areas with high speed broadband to promoting entrepreneurship, building startup incubators, running a voter registration campaign to aiding in cybersecurity and counter-terrorism measures, Facebook and Google have done it all.
 

“It is very safe to use Google or Facebook. They have a lot of data which is updated regularly,” said Asoke K Laha president and CEO, Interra Information Technologies, and former president of the Indo-American Chamber of Commerce (IACC).

Concern over cybersecurity
 

While the Digital India programme is certainly a game-changer in bringing the country up to par in internet governance and communications, experts believe  that a number of crucial issues has not been adequately addressed. For example, legal, policy and regulatory issues regarding the Digital India ecosystem have been left fuzzy and ill-defined.
 

“Issues concerning cybersecurity have not been adequately dealt with in the Digital India paradigm. This is also because India does not have a dedicated legislation on cyber security. There is a need for far more proactive legal approaches and strategies for effectively securing the Digital India initiative, especially with regard to cybersecurity,” said cybersecurity expert and Supreme Court lawyer Pavan Duggal.