A statistical analysis on the opinion of Indian citizens about opportunities and challenges of digital India mission

Introduction

India has achieved impressive progress in the field of science and technology. Our country is emerging as one of the strongest economies in the developing world. Information and communication technologies have brought significant changes in the development of the Indian society. Digital India programme is the outcome of the changes brought by the information and communication technology. It is an initiative of Government of India to connect the Government Departments and the citizens of India. It's focus is to ensure the availability of all Government service electronically from any location at any time. The mission also includes plan to connect rural areas with high speed internet networks. It is an initiative to transform the country into digitally empowered through three major components, to develop stable and secure digital infrastructure, to deliver government services digitally and to provide digital literacy.

Digital India is built on nine foundations of growth areas as follows  Universal Access to Mobile Connectivity:

To ensure mobile connectivity in all parts of the country for every citizen.  Public Internet Access Program: To improve the connectivity within the country by creating Common Service Centres (CSCs) in each gram panchayat and also converting post offices into multiservice centers.  Broadband Highways: To provide basic internet connectivity to all citizens in all areas within the country.  E-Kranti: The most pivotal initiatives of Digital India, involving access of many services like e-health care, e-justice, e-education, farming, security and financial services.  E-Education: Developing Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) which is beneficial for education and providing citizens access to huge amounts of knowledge along with a forum for students and teachers. It also includes e-scholarship scheme.  E-Governance: Making the best use of growing technology to provide services like banking, civil services, postal services, etc to every citizen.

 Information for All: Aims to store documents of citizens digitally so that there would not be any fear of theft and loss of important documents. At the same time, the authenticity of the document could be verified.  Early Harvest Programs: Contains multiple services like the national portal for lost and found children (KhoyaPaya), biometric scanners in all government offices, mass messaging app for government employees, etc.  Manufacturing of electronic items (Make in India):

This initiative aims at decreasing imports and also plans to provide jobs by promoting the establishment of electronics manufacturing plants within the country. Its final goal is to have net zero import of electronics. It would attract the investors also.

However, the initiative also lacks many crucial components including lack of legal framework, lack of privacy and data protection laws, civil liberties abuse possibilities, lack of parliamentary oversight for e-surveillance in India, lack of intelligence related reforms in India, insecure Indian cyberspace, etc. These issues have to be managed strongly for the successful implementation of Digital India mission.

Another major obstacle of connecting citizens of India digitally is poverty and illiteracy. Digital services should be in local languages also and people should be educated to understand those services.

Literature Review

Gupta and Arora (2015) [3] worked on rural India and explained how digital India would help in empowerment of rural entrepreneurship. Gulati (2016) [2] discussed on challenges and opportunities of digital India by showing the global and domestics challenges that would block the successful implementation of it and also by highlighting the opportunities that would help to achieve the goal of Digital India. Sharma (2016) [6] discussed about the impact of digital India in respect of economic, social and environmental impact. According to Haldankar (2018) [4] , if Digital India became successful, it would surely transform India by giving access to multimedia information, content and services to the citizens of India. Digital India programme was launched on 1st July, 2015 to enable digital delivery of services to citizens.

Based on the success of the programme, the Union Cabinet during August 2023 approved the expansion of the Digital India programme. In our study, we framed questions on all nine pillars of Digital India program and on various challenges of it. We analyzed the opinion of the citizens, especially youths on this mission.

Research Methodology

A survey was conducted through a Google form to analyse the opportunities and challenges of Digital India mission of the Government of India to provide various services of Government digitally to the citizen of India. 179 persons from various areas participated in this survey. SPSS software is used to analyse the primary data. Descriptive statistics and chi-square tests are used to find if there is any significant association between various factors on the study.

Statistical Analysis and Finding

Chi-Square Test 1: To test the null hypothesis

𝐇 𝟎𝟏: There is no significant association between Gender of public and their feeling that Digital India mission will create an exponential growth in job market in IT sectors. Here, 𝑝 𝑣𝑎𝑙𝑢𝑒 = 0.019, which is less than 0.05, so we can reject null hypothesis 𝐻 01 at 5% level of significance and conclude that there is a significant association between Gender of public and their feeling that Digital India mission will create an exponential growth in job market in IT sectors.

Chi-Square Test 2: To test the null hypothesis

𝐇 𝟎𝟐: There is no significant association between the awareness of public about Digital India mission of Government and their feeling that that E-Pathshala, a project under DI program would help students to update themselves independently through online courses Here, 𝑝 𝑣𝑎𝑙𝑢𝑒 = 0.023, which is less than 0.05, so we can reject null hypothesis 𝐻 02 at 5% level of significance and conclude that there is a significant association between the awareness of public about Digital India mission of Government and their feeling that that e-Pathshala, a project under DI program would help students to update themselves independently through online courses Chi-Square Test 3: To test the null hypothesis 𝐇 𝟎𝟑: There is no significant association between the awareness of public about Digital India mission of Government and their believe that Digital India project would bring a great amount of public accountability through mandated delivery of Government services electronically. Here, 𝑝 𝑣𝑎𝑙𝑢𝑒 = 0.001, which is less than 0.05, so we can reject null hypothesis 𝐻 03 at 5% level of significance and conclude that there is a significant association between the awareness of public about Digital India mission of Government and their believe that Digital India project would bring a great amount of public accountability through mandated delivery of Government services.

Chi-Square Test 4: To test the null hypothesis

𝐇 𝟎𝟒: There is no significant association between the believe that Digital India programme will put an end to corruption system which becomes the main concern in our country now and their believe that the lack of proper coordination and cooperation of all government departments would delay the proper implementation of Digital India movement to acquire digitally empowered economy. Here, 𝑝 𝑣𝑎𝑙𝑢𝑒 = 0.039, which is less than 0.05, so we can reject null hypothesis 𝐻 04 at 5% level of significance and conclude that there is a significant association between the believe that Digital India programme will put an end to corruption system which becomes the main concern in our country now and their believe that the lack of proper coordination and cooperation of all government departments would delay the proper implementation of Digital India movement to acquire digitally empowered economy Chi-Square Test 5: To test the null hypothesis 𝐇 𝟎𝟓: There is no significant association between the believe that Digital India programme will put an end to corruption system which becomes the main concern in our country now and their believe that Digital India will encourage the students for all scholarship process provided by the Government of India right from submission of application, verification and disbursal of amount on National scholarship portal. Here, 𝑝 𝑣𝑎𝑙𝑢𝑒 = 0.042, which is less than 0.05, so we can reject null hypothesis 𝐻 05 at 5% level of significance and conclude that there is a significant association between the believe that Digital India programme will put an end to corruption system which becomes the main concern in our country now and their believe that Digital India will encourage the students for all scholarship process provided by the Government of India right from submission of application, verification and disbursal of amount on National scholarship portal Chi-Square Test 6: To test the null hypothesis 𝐇 𝟎𝟔: There is no significant association between the believe that there is a need to have a standardization of the software and hardware protocols in different states of India for better connectivity of e-governance and their believe that the Digital India programme should ensure that there should be some strong privacy norms and a proper authentication system for all the documents uploaded online by the citizens and its will be available for right person at the right time. Here, 𝑝 𝑣𝑎𝑙𝑢𝑒 = 0.00024, which is less than 0.05, so we can reject null hypothesis 𝐻 06 at 5% level of significance and conclude that there is a significant association between the believe that there is a need to have a standardization of the software and hardware protocols in different states of India for better connectivity of e-governance and their believe that the Digital India programme should ensure that there should be some strong privacy norms and a proper authentication system for all the documents uploaded online by the citizens and its will be available for right person at the right time

Conclusions

These are the following conclusions 1. 85% people are aware about Digital India movement of Government of India where all government services and information will be available digitally which can be accessible from anywhere and anytime. 2. 79% people believe that Digital India programme will put an end to corruption system which becomes the main concern in our country now. 3. 93% people believe that Digital India movement will encourage the students for all scholarship process provided by the Government of India right from submission of application, verification and disbursal of amount on National scholarship portal. 4. 86% people believe that Digital India movement will benefit people of India in every village in terms of knowledge improve by using internet in day-to-day life. 5. 88% people believe that implementation of DI project will result a bank account of every Indian. 6. 88% people believe that the DI mission will create an exponential growth in job market in IT sectors. 7. 91% people believe that DI mission will stop import of electronics items and make it by Indian electronics manufacturer. 8. 88% people agree that E-Pathshala, a project under DI program would help students to update themselves independently through online courses. 9. 93% people believe that there is a need to have a standardization of the software and hardware protocols in different states of India for better connectivity of egovernance. 10. 93% people believe that it is a great challenge to build entire country wide broadband connection which is the main pillar of the Digital India movement. 11. 93% people agree that cyber-crime and cyber-attack are the main threats of Digital India mission which should be handled by the Government with strict action.

So the majority of the people believe that the digital India Mission is a great initiative by the Government of India but the challenges should be minimised by various measures.

References

1. Goswami H. Opportunities and Challenges of Digital India Programme. International Education and Research Journal. 2016;2(11):78-79.
2. Gulati M. Digital India: Challenges and Opportunities. International Journal of Management, Information Technology and Engineering. 2016;4(10):1-4.
3. Gupta N, Arora K. Digital India: A roadmap for the development of rural India. International Journal of Business Management. 2015;2(2):1333-1342.
4. Haldankar GB. Digital India: A key to transform India. International Journal of Creative Research. 2018;6(2):1368-1375.
5. Jani J, Tere G. Digital India: A need of hours. International Journal of Advanced Research in Computer Science and Software Engineering. 2015;5(8):317-319.
6. Sharma J. Digital India and Its Impact on the Society. International Journal of Research in Humanities & Social Sciences. 2016;4(4):64-70.