Articles
Digitalisation in Bharat In the Last Decade (2014-25)
Dt: 23/7/25
Digitalisation in Bharat
In the Last Decade (2014-25)
Dr T H Chowdary*
My house-maid, a class three drop-out, aged about forty goes to the weekly neighbourhood vegetables vendors’ line, buys the week’s vegetables. She takes no cash with her. She takes my cell phone with her. The vegetable vending ladies too have cell phone . My maid pays the vendor through her cell phone into her bank account. Both get the message regarding the debit and credit.
2. My driver, a rajaka by caste has his father in a far- off village in East Godavari District of AP . He periodically sends money - does not go to the post office or a bank. He sends money from his cell phone to the far-off father’s cell phone. The debit and credit are messaged from their banks into their cell phones.
3. One applies for ration cards at an E-Seva Kendra which uploads his/her Aadhar card, electricity bill etc. After few days he/she can collect the ration card.
4. These are transactions by even semi-literate people living and working almost anywhere in Bharat. Electricity brought light and power into homes and work places. Telecommunications and cell phones are transforming Bharat into a digital ( not Dismay) . In the 1980s, I popularized the goals to be achieved:
· Haath, haath mein telephone: Goan , gaon main Internet
· Communicate for work: Commute for pleasure
5. Through series of economic industrial and commercial reforms we built a state of the art telecom network and transformed it by exertions of rightly regulated fiercely competing telecom companies building and up-grading electronic- photonic telecom high way systems for storage and exchange of information - speech , text, graphics, data… The basic infrastructure required for informatisation of population, society, business, education and government has been built by the middle of the second decade of the this century.
6. What is accomplished since the last eleven years is phenomenal. Highly motivating the people inspiring and instructing the people by Prime Minister Narendra Modi for new ways of doing every type of work. We are now a specially and highly digitalising nation. The following figures bear this out:
· Jan Dhan A/C : 55.02 cr i.e 36.63 cr in rural area
· Bank A/Cs : 250 cr
· Nearly every house-hold has an A/C
· SBI - 50 cr
· No. of ration cards: 85 cr
· Telephones: 121 Cr (85 per 100 people; urban :132% rural:60%)
· Internet connections: 2014 - 25 cr; 2025 - 97 cr
· Fiber optical cable: 42 lakh kilometers ( 11 times the earth – moon distance)
· 8,00,000 cell phone towers
· Platforms like UPI handle 100 billion ( 10,000 cr) transactions / year - half of the world’s
· Direct Benefit Transfers - 44,00,000 cr (cutting leakage of Rs. 3.8 lakh cr)
· Open network for digital commerce - for buyers and vendors ( recently crossed 20 Cr half in the last six months)
· GeM - Government e-Market place ( crosses one lakh crore transactions in 50 days)
· COVIN: World’s largest vaccination program issued 220 cr QR verifiable certificates
· Digital locker has 54 cr users
· India logs half of the world’s digital transactions
7. Finally just as we have the Vedic aspiration
Om Sahanaavavatu, sahanu bhunaktu
Sahaveeryam Karavaavahaih
Tejasvinaavadheetamastu
Maa Vidvishaavahaih,
Om! Shantih, shantih, shantih!
8. The Prime Miniter Narendra Modi’s call is :
· Let us build empowers
· Let us solve what truly matters
· Let us lead with technology that unites, includes and uplifts
9. Digitalisation and Artificial Intelligence shall be used for aryanising (enabling) the whole humanity
· Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam..
· Ekam sat, viprah bahudhaa vadanti
· Krinvato viswamaaryam
 |
Where the Hindu is without fear
Where the Hindu is “Without Fear”
Where true history is told and every Hindu holds his head high
Where Bharat is not broken into Muslim and Christian districts
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where reason and inquiry are not silenced by terror of fanatics
Where treason and guilt are reason for insecurity of some
Into the heaven of freedom, honest endeavour and divine grace ,
My father ! let my country awake and march
(With apologies to Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore’s,
“Where the mind is without fear” )
(640 words)
END