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Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

A Reality Check on India’s Search for Digital Utopia -Preeti Mudliar

-The Hindu Centre for Politics and Public Policy

The Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the persistent digital divide afflicting rural India owing to poor and insufficient internet connectivity. With the Prime Minister’s Independence Day speech acknowledging the need ‘to complete’ internet connectivity to villages, there is a renewed vigour and interest in the National Optic Fibre Network (NOFN)/BharatNet project. An important question to pose when translating policy to project is: when should a project considered to be "complete" – in this case a technology infrastructure project such as Bharat Net? This question gains importance against the backdrop of India’s attempts to bridge the several urban-rural divides in access to technology. Restrictions on physical contact during the COVID-19 pandemic also mean that there is a greater reliance on internet-based solutions for a range of services. This situation can also be the time to fast-track India to a digital society.

In this article, Preeti Mudliar, Assistant Professor, IIIT-Bangalore (The International Institute of Information Technology - Bangalore), points out that there is a lot to learn and unpack from the failures of the early NOFN-connected villages as well as previous infrastructure policy initiatives such as the ill-fated Aakash tablet. For intent to be translated to effective policy implementation, she says, it is important to go beyond a number-chase and ensure that realistic markers of progress are set and financial, technical, and personnel resources are provided to sustain and upgrade the infrastructure created.

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