Bridging the digital divide

Telecom connectivity in India has registered spectacular growth in the past ten years. Bridging the rural-urban divide in internet access, however, continues to be a daunting challenge. The “Indian Telecom Services Performance Indicators, October–December, 2023,” published by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), lays bare the ground realities. According to the report, total Internet subscribers in rural India at the end of December 2023 stood at 388 million, compared to 548 million in urban India. The number of internet subscribers per 100 population shows a wider rural-urban gap. In rural areas, there are only 43 internet subscribers per 100 population compared to 110 internet subscribers per 100 population in urban areas. Figures in the report show that in Assam, the disparity between rural and urban areas is much greater than the national average. Against 39 subscribers per 100 rural population in the state, there are about 121 internet subscribers per 100 urban population. The number of subscribers in urban areas being more than 100 per 100 population is explained by more internet connections than the total population on account of multiple connections of individual subscribers. The rural-urban divide continues despite significant progress made in the BharatNet project. Under the flagship rural broadband connectivity project, more than 2.1 lakh villages of the total 2.69 lakh villages have been made service-ready in the country, but so far, 64,913 villages have operational broadband connectivity. The situation persists even though the cost of data has drastically reduced from Rs. 269 per GB in March 2014 to Rs. 9.44 per GB in June 2023, and the median speed for mobile broadband has also improved from 1.30 Mbps in 2014 to 91.81 Mbps in December 2023. The scope of the BharatNet project has been expanded to connect all inhabited villages with an outlay of Rs. 1.88 lakh crore. While telecom infrastructure has received a huge financial push by the government, addressing the problem of villages not having operational broadband connectivity despite being service-ready needs to be prioritized to achieve the objectives of the Digital India programme. The Digital India programme envisages a digitally empowered society and knowledge-based economy by ensuring digital access, digital inclusion, digital empowerment, and bridging the digital divide. If the rural-urban divide is not bridged in terms of internet access and teledensity, then these objectives will remain unachieved. Three key vision areas of the programme are: digital infrastructure as a core utility to every citizen; governance and services on demand; and digital empowerment of citizens. The government says that the rationale behind the Digital India programme is to ensure that digital technologies improve the lives of every citizen, expand India’s digital economy, create investment and jobs, and transform India from a consumer of technology to a technology-producing country. A key project under the Digital India Programme is the e-Panchayat Mission Mode Project (MMP), which is aimed at making Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs), more transparent, accountable, and effective as local self-governments. The eGramSwaraj application developed under it encompasses all aspects of panchayat functioning, viz., planning, budgeting, accounting, monitoring, asset management, etc., on a single digital platform, including online payments. So far, 2.52 lakh Gram Panchayats have prepared and uploaded their Gram Panchayat Development Plans (GPDP) for 2023–24, while 2.41 lakh Gram Panchayats have completed online transactions for 15th Finance Commission grants for 2023-24. Increasing the number of GPs with operational broadband services is critical to ensuring the delivery of online services to rural populations. Access to the internet in rural areas is crucial to improving educational standards by providing students in villages access to online resources, reference material, and distance modes of learning. This will bridge the gap between rural and urban students as far as knowledge access is concerned. If the gap continues to persist, the urban children will move ahead, while a large section of rural students without adequate access to the digital world because of a lack of internet facilities will lag behind the urban students. Even within rural areas, the disparity between those students with internet access and those without internet access will widen further. This will have a cascading impact on the rural economy as villages without internet access will have fewer entrepreneurial ventures in the digital world, and even those coming with entrepreneurship or progressive farming ideas will not be able to nurture them to the level that allows them to compete with others in the rest of the country with better access to the digital world, digital marketing. It is hoped that the new government to be formed at the centre will give a major policy push to make every single village have operational broadband connectivity and bridge the gap between rural and urban teledensity and internet access at the earliest. Uniform digital access is also crucial for the country to reap the benefits of the demographic dividend.