The Government’s initiatives such as Digital India, Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT), and Government e-Marketplace (GeM) aim to actively transform India into both a knowledge-based economy and a digitally-empowered society.
• The Pradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) resulted in a massive increase in financial inclusion.
• Further, fintech is expanding on the achievement of financial inclusion by providing a variety of payment and transaction possibilities.
• According to the National Payments Corporation of India, till March 2022, UPI had processed 5.04 billion transactions, amounting to Rs 8.88 trillion.
• The Union Cabinet approved a scheme called “Pradhan Mantri Gramin Digital Saksharta Abhiyan(PMGDISHA)” in 2017 to promote digital literacy in rural India by covering 6 crore rural households.
• Through the combination of Jan Dhan bank accounts and mobile phones and the establishment of digital identity through Aadhaar, the poor can now receive benefits directly into their bank accounts.
• To mark the country’s 75th anniversary of independence, Scheduled Commercial Banks are proposing the establishment of 75 Digital Banking Units (DBUS) in 75 districts across the country .
• The Prime Minister launched the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission in September 2021 to create a digital health repository for all Indians.
There has been an unprecedented expansion of telemedicine during the pandemic. Till the end of September 2021, around 125 crore remote consultations have been completed under the eSanjeevani portal.
• A National Tele Mental Health Programme has been developed to improve access to high-quality mental health counselling and treatment services.
o This would feature a network of 23 world-class tele-mental health centres, with NIMHANS serving as the nodal centre and the International Institute of Information Technology Bangalore (IIITB) providing technical support.
• Digital delivery of services has simplified the manner in which citizens interact with the government.
• CSCs are the world’s largest digital service delivery network, with a broad reach in rural areas up to Gram Panchayat and Block level.
• The UMANG mobile app (Unified Mobile Application for New-age Governance) is all-in-one single,unified, secure mobile app that provides access to high-impact services of various Gol Departments and State governments.
• The UMANG application has already started providing the following functionalities:
o Mera Ration: helps users identify and navigate to the nearest Fair Price Shops.
o eNam: Through the ‘Mandi Near Me’ service on UMANG, users can identify and navigate to the nearby mandis pointed on the map.
o ‘Damini Lightning Alerts’ service gives users a visual of nearby places where lightning has struck in the recent few minutes to offer lightning alerts.
• Further, services like DigiLocker aim to give citizens access to all their lifelong documents in a single digital wallet.
• For Indian farmers, the deployment of ‘Kisan drones’ and the push for technology driven agriculture would be beneficial in ensuring quality produce.
• The use of the state-of-the-art drones for the purpose of spraying fertilisers, and monitoring yield and produce would aid the farmers in producing high-quality yield with reduced levels of labour.
• An e-portal for a digital ecosystem for skilling and livelihood known as DESH STACK will aid in skilling,up-skilling, and reskilling.