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Of the 121 crore Indians, 83.3 crore live in rural areas while 37.7 crore stay in urban areas, said the Census of India's 2011. India is going through a digital revolution which is unique in this country. Lenin said in 1921, “Communism is Russia plus electricity all over the country”. Digital India initiative promises to present India with complete IT empowerment. Smart cities are coming up. Villages are not far behind too. The government initiatives are in need of whole hearted support from the IT community, entrepreneurs and private sector including large corporates as well as SMEs too.

This is no less a revolution in scale, quality and all round excitement than any political coup. Moreover this will mean a revolution in health, education, basic civic services, and will help massively in transforming our isolated culture blind closed village communities into national and global members. Economy and knowledge sharing is boosted massively due to a growing need for hardware, software, skills, training, communication, trading of ideas and products, services and technologies. The campaign is also of spreading awareness and benefits within and beyond the community radar.

Let us have a quick look at the scenario of growth and initiative in Digital India for rural communities.

Some Benefit Schemes:

The Government of India is all set to implement a Digital Village initiative across rural India in order to provide services in tele-medicine, tele-education and wi-fi hotspots across 100 villages in its pilot phase. Digital Village pilot intends to provide a platform for availability of services such as tele medicine, tele education, LED street lighting, wi-fi hotspot and skill development to the people at the gram panchayat level in select blocks across various states and union territories. This project differs from the traditional approach of e-Governance projects (that focused on creating infrastructure) and adopts a service based approach for pilot of the Digital Village.

For tele medicine, a group of rural schools will be parented by a lead school. The lead school can be a government or private school, reputed and trusted at block, district or state level. All these tele-education classrooms are proposed to be equipped with a video-

conferencing facility. The curriculum and pedagogy will be decided by the concerned states.

In order to execute the tele-education services. Empanelment of agencies would be done at the central level and the states would select the agencies from these panels. To ensure connectivity at most times in the schools, service providers responsible for the connections would be penalised up to 10 per cent of the monthly or quarterly billed amount for a particular location.

Economy and knowledge sharing is boosted massively due to a growing need for hardware, software, training, communication, trading of ideas, and products, services and technologies

In Health Services similar Lead hospital will be set up to guide and parent a group of three Primary Health Centers (PHCs) in the pilot block. Each of the PHC would have tele-medicine solution which will include medical diagnostics kit, video conferencing kit/inbuilt system for medical consultation sessions, and other IT devices/peripherals. Tele-medicine solution along with the medical kit will be used by medical/paramedical staff at PHC to provide the vital medical data of the patient to the doctor at lead hospital who would provide the medical consultancy.

Are Smart Villages Happening Really?

Rural India is going to be transformed by Digital India. The Government of India has selected 60 villages in three districts of Rajgarh, Sehore, and Satna to develop as ‘Smart Villages’ under the most ambitious ‘Smart Cities’ project. For the development of these smart villages, funds will be provided for specific development. Each village will get Rs. 25 crore. The highlights are on climate change, smart energy, agriculture, and water. Smart village development will come about in the state in coordination with Environment Planning and Coordinating Agency (EPCO).

The proposal is developed by coordinating with National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD). The project will focus on uplift of rural areas by greater credit flow to give push to agriculture and rural non-farm sector. The project is expected to be of three years duration. However, 20 villages have been selected for development in districts tagged as climate change smart villages.

Broadband Connectivity For Redefined, United India

Digital India is at a basic level all about connecting the country digitally. The initiative covers three sub components, namely Broadband for All - Rural, Broadband for All - Urban and National Information Infrastructure (NII).

Broadband for All - Rural

2,50,000 village Panchayats were covered under the National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) by December 2016 by the nodal agency Department of Telecommunications (DoT).

Broadband for All - Urban
Virtual Network Operators are leveraged for service delivery and communication infrastructure in new urban developments and buildings have been mandated.

National Information Infrastructure (NII)
NII is working to integrate the network and cloud infrastructure in the country to provide high speed connectivity and cloud platform to various government departments up to the panchayat level. These infrastructure components include networks such as State Wide Area Network (SWAN), National Knowledge Network (NKN), National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN), Government User Network (GUN) and the MeghRaj Cloud. NII aims at integrating all ICT infrastructure components such as SWANs, NKN, NOFN, GUN and GI Cloud. It ensures provision for horizontal connectivity to 100, 50, 20 and 5 government offices/ service outlets at state, district, block and Panchayat levels respectively.