Question : Digital Facilities in Border Areas

Will the Minister of ELECTRONICS & INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY be pleased to state: -
(a). the steps taken by the Government for better dissemination of digital facilities under Digital India in border areas/villages of the country including Ganganagar and Dausa of Rajasthan;
(b). whether the Government proposes to take help of private sector for better dissemination of digital facilities in the said border areas/villages;
(c). if so, the details thereof;
(d). whether the Government proposes to promote information and technology infrastructure for providing digital connection to village panchayats; and
(e). if so, the details thereof?

(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. Some of the key initiatives taken by the Government for better dissemination of digital facilities in border areas/villages of the country including Ganganagar and Dausa of Rajasthan are as follows:
• Common Services Centre (CSC): MeitY is implementing “Common Services Centre (CSC) 2.0” under Digital India Programme, which aims to set-up at-least one CSC at 2.50 lakh Gram Panchayats (GP) across the country, for delivery of various Government to Citizen (G2C) and other citizen centric e-Services to citizens. It is a self-sustainable entrepreneurship model which is run by Village Level Entrepreneurs (VLEs). As on July, 2020, total 3.64 lakh functional CSCs across the country, of which, 2.66 lakh are functional at Gram Panchayat (GP) level. It includes 35,094 functional CSCs at the border areas/ Villages.
• Digital Village: MeitY has also initiated the “Digital Village Pilot Project” in October, 2018. 700 Gram Panchayats(GPs)/ villages with atleast one Gram Panchayat/village per District per State/UT are being covered across the country. The digital services being offered are Digital Health Services (Tele-Health & Tele-Veterinary consultation), Education Service (NIELIT courses on BCC/CCC, Tally), Financial Inclusion Awareness Programme, Skill Development, Solar panel powered street lights including Government to Citizens Services (G2C), Business to Citizen (B2C) Services. The pilot project covers 33 villages of Rajasthan (one each from the 33 districts) which includes Ganganagar and Dausa district.

(b) and (c): The Government is already using services through private participation in various initiatives such as Common Services Centre, Digital Village, Cloud Service Provider(CSP), Pradhan Mantri Gramin Digital Saksharta Abhiyan (PMGDISHA), India BPO Promotion Scheme & North East BPO Promotion Scheme etc. to carry out various activities under Digital India programme.

(d) and (e): BharatNet project is being implemented by Department of Telecommunications to provide broadband connectivity to all the Gram Panchayats( Approx 2.5 lakh) in the country. So far, a total of 1,43,885 Gram Panchayats are made service ready for high speed broadband services.
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