(a): The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Government of India has initiated the ‘Digital India’ programme with the vision to transform India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy. Digital India is an umbrella programme that covers multiple projects of various Central Ministries/Departments and States/UTs. The Digital India programme is centred on three key vision areas namely Digital Infrastructure as a Core Utility to Every Citizen, Governance and Services on Demand and Digital Empowerment of Citizens.
(b) and (c): Some of the key initiatives taken by the Government to make Information Technology accessible to the people residing in rural, hilly and remote areas including Chhattisgarh are as follows:
• Common Services Centre (CSC): Common Services Centres are internet enabled centres operated by local entrepreneur, called Village Level Entrepreneurs (VLEs) and provide eServices to rural citizens. For this, MeitY has initiated a project namely “Common Services Centre (CSC) 2.0” in August, 2015 under Digital India Programme, which envisages setting up of at least one CSC at Gram Panchayat (GP) to cover all the 2.5 lakh GPs across the country. Over 300 digital services are being offered by these CSCs. The number of functional CSCs (Urban & Rural) across the Country is 3,12,651 CSCs, out of which 2,12,718 CSCs are functional at Gram Panchayat level.
• DigiGaon: MeitY has also initiated the ’Digital Village Pilot Project” in October, 2018. 700 Gram Panchayats (GPs) with atleast one Gram Panchayat per District per State/UT are being covered under the project. The digital services being offered are Digital Health Services (Tele-Health & Tele-Veterinary consultation), Education Service, Financial Services, Skill Development, Solar panel powered street lights including Government to Citizens Services (G2C), Business to Citizen (B2C) Services.
• BharatNet: BharatNet is an ambitious initiative to trigger a broadband revolution in rural areas. This project is being implemented by Department of Telecommunications. BharatNet aims to connect all the 2,50,000 Gram Panchayats in the country and provide 100 Mbps connectivity to all gram panchayats (GPs). 3,10,097 Kms optical fiber has been laid connecting 1,23,489 Gram Panchayats. 1,16,876 Gram Panchayats are ready for service.
• e-District Mission Mode Project (MMP): e-District project has been implemented at district and sub-district levels of all States/UTs, benefitting all citizens by delivering various e-Services such as Certificates (Birth, Caste, Death, Income and Local Resident), Pension (Old Age, Disability and Widow), Electoral, Consumer Court, Revenue Court, Land Record and services of various departments such as Commercial Tax, Agriculture, Labour, Employment Training & Skill Development etc. e-District services have been launched in 721 districts across all States/ UTs.
(d) and (e): National Informatics Centre (NIC), an attached office of Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY), has its State Centres at State level and District level all over India. These State and District Centres continuously guide and assist the Government Officers in ICT applications. NIC also provides various citizen centric services through its products and platforms such as e-Hospital, e-Counseling, Service plus, e-Transport, Jeevan Pramaan, National Scholarship Portal etc which can also used by rural people and thus fulfilling their aspiration. In addition to these, State e-Mission Team(SeMT) has also been deployed at each State/UTs.
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