Prime Minister Narendra Modi is known for attracting top corporates and investors to support his events and the mega-launch of Digital India plan in the national capital on July 1 is going to be no different. Going by the plan, around 400 top CEOs, including Tata Group chairman Cyrus Mistry, Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani, Azim Premji, Bharti Group chairman Sunil Mittal and Adani Group chairman Gautam Adani, are likely to attend the event besides several heads of the MNCs.
During the course of the week following its launch, a complete framework for transforming India into a digital society will be unveiled and many of the companies would be announcing their interests in different projects that are part of the Digital India plan. The most important aspect of the model is it strives to make the life of common man easier and has been designed in a cost-effective manner which is easy to handle.
The whole plan will offer five products — Digitize India Platform, Digital Locker, National Scholarship Portal, e-Hospital and e-Sign. It will have four portals/apps — Digital India Portal and Mobile App, MyGov Mobile App, Swachh Bharat Mission App and Aadhaar Mobile Update App – to help people associate themselves with the government initiatives. The department of telecom’s projects to create BharatNet in 11 States, Wi-Fi hot spots across the country, and also the next generation network (NGN), are also part of the plan.
The weeklong event will also see the announcement of measures to create a Centre for Flexible Electronics and also Centre of Excellence in IoT besides outlining of the policy documents on EDF and e-Governance policy initiatives under Digital India. This is all that has been planned, but for the Digital India to succeed in delivering results, two aspects will be critical.
The states will have to be roped in effectively in creating the Digital India eco-space and those using the applications must find it easy to operate and also secure. The security part, those handling it claim, has been taken care of. So, the central government’s biggest challenge will be to instill confidence in the states that Digital India can be a role model for furthering co-operative federalism so that all the state-level agencies also join Digital India.