Digital India: 2. Enabling Citizens to Use Digital India

Digital India is an inclusive program. It is aimed at and designed for every resident of India. Digital India is also new platform for delivering citizen services electronically. To use this new platform and to take advantage of its resources and consume citizen services , the citizen must be enabled. The first and most important thing towards enabling the citizen is to provide access to these resources to every resident. This is enshrined as  one of the 3 key visions  of Digital India programme. Towards this goal, the government of India has providing the following

• Digital infrastructure  as an utility to every citizen: To enable citizens to access service electronically, government provides  digital infrastructure as an utility. The digital India services are accessible by the Indian residents anywhere in India. The government is building a huge Internet connectivity called “ broadband highways”  that connect more than 2,50,000 gram panchayat and 55,669 villages uncovered in the country. The “ Universal access to mobile connectivity”  is  considered pillar of the Digital India program. Once the networks are in place and cover rural India, the resulting “ Public Internet” will enable each citizen can access digital india resources and consume its services through network using their mobiles and goverment kiosk called “ Common  Service Centers (CSC).
• Aadhaar identifies a resident uniquely: Before delivering a service on digital India platform, the government needs to ascertain that the person seeking service is the resident and is eligible for availing those services. The UIDAI established in 2009 has provided more than 112 crore indians a unique number called Aadhaar numbers. Using biometric features and demographic data, the aadhaar uniquely identfies Indian residents. The Aadhaar system is an online authentication system. It allows resident to provide their Aadhaar number and get authenticated online anywhere in India