The Digital India initiative is taking a ‘Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani’ approach to develop communication infrastructure, government information systems, and a digitally capacitate public life in India. ‘Public life’ here implies the wide sphere of interactions between people and public institutions.
This approach is like putting together Japanese shoes, British trousers, and a Russian cap for making an Indian entertainer. In this case, the analogy must not be understood as different components of the initiative coming from different countries, but as efforts made to use digital technology for governance in India. The initiative is deploying the Public Information Infrastructure vision, which will include the National Optical Fibre Network (BharatNet) and national cloud computing platform (Meghraj). The central identity platform is the Aadhaar ID and the authentication-as-a-service infrastructure built by the team of Nandan Nilekani and Ram Sewak Sharma.
It has embraced the mandate proposed by the Jaswant Singh-led National Task Force (1999) for fully digitising citizen-government interactions. The aspects of e-education and digital literacy are built upon the National Mission on Education through information and communication technology, once driven by Kapil Sibal. Two major visions of the Digital India (DI) initiative are directly drawn from the approaches of the National e-Governance Plan designed by R Chandrashekhar.
And this is not a bad thing at all.
In fact, the need for this programmatic and strategic convergence has been felt for quite some time, and it is wonderful to see the prime minister addressing this need. While drawing from the existing programmes, the DI initiative must also deal with the challenges inherited in the process.
For instance, the recently launched eBasta website, developed by Centre for Development of Advanced Computing and Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY), is a go-to portal for publishers of education materials, teachers, and students. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Human Resource Development has already collaborated with Central Institute of Educational Technology and Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education in Tata Institute of Fundamental Research to build a comprehensive platform for multi-media resources for education – the National Repository of Open Educational Resources. It is to be recognised that the key challenge is not in building new applications and websites, but to align them with the existing efforts.
Further, the ‘e-Governance Policy Initiatives under Digital India’ document, which lists key policies to govern the DI initiative programmes, fails to mention any policies, acts, and bills approved or initiated by any previous government. This is remarkably counter-productive as the existing policy frameworks such as National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy, Framework for Mobile Governance, and Interoperability Framework for e-Governance are suitably placed to ensure transparency, interoperability, and inclusiveness of DI programmes. Also, several pending bills like The National Identification Authority of India Bill, 2010, The Electronic Delivery of Services Bill, 2011, and The Privacy (Protection) Bill, 2013, are fundamental for a comprehensive and secure implementation of the proposed DI programmes.
In 2016, India will complete a decade since the launch of National e-Governance Plan (2006). Given its history of information systems, their partial implementation and their workings in isolation, a ‘Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani’ approach to digitise India is a pragmatic one. What we do not need, however, is an increased contradiction among e-governance systems, digital systems centralising government’s power within one ministry, or exposing citizens’ digital identity and assets for abuse due to lack of sufficient legal and security frameworks.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Sumandro Chattapadhyay
Quelle/Source: Hindustan Times, 15.07.2015
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