Considering the smartphone penetration in the rural areas, the govt wants to create more apps instead of websites
Make more smartphone apps seems to be the new mantra of the Ministry of Telecom and Information Technology. The Department of Electronics and Information and Technology (DEITY) under Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been striving to promote app culture in India and is shifting focus from just creating websites.
According to DEITY in the last one year, around 666 applications were made live on various app stores and 62 are in demo stage. The ministry has got these apps made in association with the ten Centre For Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC) centers across the country.
DEITY officials said that the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) as part of the ‘Digital India’ campaign has given them standing orders that apps for specific purposes should be made and promoted as the smartphone penetration in urban and rural areas has drastically increased. According to the IT Ministry, there are more than 70 million smartphone users in rural areas out of 905 million users in India.
Also apps for specific purposes are less cumbersome to make, are precise and are more appealing to smartphone users than websites, which require computers as they might be too heavy to be opened on phones. Most of these apps have been developed in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Gujarati and various other regional languages.
“Earlier the focus was on developing websites, but now we are slowly shifting the focus to developing more smartphone applications as the PMO believes that they have more penetration in rural areas as the number of smartphones is way more than desktop computers and laptops. As apps are more basic the adoptability in rural areas is more,” said a senior DEITY official.
According to DEITY government apps are finding a lot of takers in the rural area. Apps on various aspects of e-governance, agriculture, basic healthcare and sanitation, education are being downloaded the maximum number of times
A large percentage of apps are education-based, which aid school teachers in rural areas to help them teach children. “These are basic applications that aid teachers in helping students learn English and other languages, algebra, calculus and other subjects. Teachers are able to stay abreast with the current curriculum from these apps and students get a free tutorial of sort at the touch of a smartphone,” added the official.
Also, there are apps for farmers, which help them understand the seasonal crop cycles, let them know about new bio-fertilisers, manures, helping them understand which seeds would help them get maximum yields. “We have even developed an app which helps fishermen in coastal areas locate regions where the density of fish is more,” added the official.
For promotion of these apps in rural areas the government is roping gram panchayat heads, school teachers to tell them about these apps for specific purposes and also help them and get them a direct connect with the government. The government also plans to promote these apps at its common service centers (CSC) in rural areas. These centers will in future become hubs for internet-based training and e-commerce transaction.
Some of the apps that got maximum downloads are voter information search app, which can help check whether a person's name has been included in the electoral roll of the constituency, Algebra and English learning app.
Some of the apps made by the government
- Agrimart: AgriMarket mobile app can be used to get the market price of crops in the markets within 50 km of the device’s location. This app automatically captures the location of person using mobile GPS and fetches the market price of crops in those markets which falls within the range of 50 km. There is another option to get price of any market and any crop in case person does not want to use GPS location.
- National Portal for India: National Portal of India has been developed as a Mission Mode Project (MMP) under the National E-Governance Plan (NEGP) of the Government. The objective of the mobile app is to provide a single window access to the information and services being provided by the Indian Government for citizens and other stakeholders.
- National e-district service tracker: National eDistrict Service Tracker mobile app provides state wise/ Category wise listing of services available in various states under eDistrict MMP. A citizen can track the status of his application by providing an application reference number provided to him at the time of application of service in his local district office of the state which provides this service under eDistrict MMP.
- Voter information search using internet: A voter can check whether his/her name has been included in the electoral roll of the constituency and can also find out the polling station using this application. The application fetches the information over the mobile internet.
- English rhymes: This app can be used to access class-6 english rhymes of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh's state syllabus.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Karan Choudhury
Quelle/Source: Business Standard, 25.12.2015
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