Republic Economic Summit | How India's digital boom propels our country as a world leader

In the lead-up to the first-ever Republic 'India Economic Summit', which will see the most influential names in the industry and the economic world come together to put the world's fastest-growing major economy under the microscope, Republic World is taking an in-depth look into some of its key drivers. Today we look into how the digital space is shaping India, how it is impacting the lives of its citizens and how Digital is the future.

Data boom

One of India's prime leverage points has always been its numbers. India's data consumption continues to boom and to support it, the country boasts of one of the cheapest data rates in the world. At an average cost of $0.68 per gigabyte (GB), India is well below the global aggregate of $4.21/ GB. Additionally, India has the highest mobile data consumption rate at 12GB per user a month in the world. The numbers not only help India emerge as a thriving ground to launch digital initiatives but in turn, give reality to PM Narendra Modi's ambitious Digital India vision. 

How India's smartphone penetration has given a boost to digital literacy

Statistics show that India adds nearly 25 million new smartphone users every quarter. If we just look at these numbers in the time frame of the pandemic (2020-21), we see how India's smartphone usage has boomed. The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) Rural, released in November, details the penetration of digital literacy in rural areas, largely driven by the purchase of smartphones.

According to the report, in the pandemic alone, the purchase of smartphones in households with children doubled and at least 27.9% of households in rural India bought a new smartphone for their children’s education this year. In 2018, the pre-pandemic year, 36.5% of children had a smartphone available at home. This number doubled to 67.6% in 2021.

Government's Digital India mission

'Digital India Mission' is perhaps one of the most ambitious projects launched under Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government. The project dubbed as 'a transformative idea' aims to pull together many existing schemes and restructure them to reach innovative solutions. In line with this, several initiatives have been undertaken, some during the COVID pandemic, that has proved to be trailblazing for the nation.

The revolution largely started with the 'JAM' trinity- the initiative to link Jan Dhan accounts, mobile numbers and Aadhaar cards of Indians to plug the leakages of government subsidies. Turning out to be the world's largest national identification project, the program helped ensure easy access to financial services, banking savings, remittance, credit, insurance and pension and several other initiatives of the government.

Similarly, Unified Payments Interface (UPI) was used through the Bharat Interface for Money (BHIM) apps which helped make payment transactions simple, easy and quick. This enabled direct bank-to-bank payments and collection of money simply using a Mobile number or Payment address.

The birth of the CoWIN app - the central government's web portal for the tracking of COVID-19 vaccination and its registration - is a great success story to tell. Similarly, Aarogya Setu, which is a "contact tracing, syndromic mapping, and self-assessment" digital service, helped the government reign in the spread of the infections in small pockets and large cities, solely through records inputted digitally.

The latest scheme to join the Digital India Mission is the Pradhan Mantri Digital Health Mission (PM-DHM). The initiative focuses on the organisation of a citizen's health records on a digital platform to ease access to healthcare services. The longitudinal exchange of health records will be facilitated through a health ID for every citizen which will have its own unique code like the Aadhaar card.