The Digital India Mission, launched by the NDA government, aims to connect 2.5 lakh village panchayats with high speed broadband internet by December, 2016 so that citizens can access online services. However, available facts reveal that this is a difficult task to be accomplished. In rural areas, among the youth aged 14-29 about 82 percent do not know how to operate a computer. In urban areas, nearly 51 percent of youth...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: There is widespread support for net neutrality on the government's citizen engagement platform mygov.in where a majority of people have voiced their concerns against zero-rated plans. There are nearly 70,000 comments on the website with just a day to go before the end of the participative process and most of these seek unfettered and non-discriminatory access to the internet. "Telecom should not define policy. Net neutrality...

-The Indian Express Net neutrality prevents profit-driven entities from overriding freedom of the Web.  The key thing that should concern all of us this week about the internet is net neutrality. Here is a brief statement of things the way they are, no technical mumbo jumbo, no scholarly interpretations. The internet as we understand it is built on a foundational principle of not discriminating against the information and traffic that flows through...

-The Hindu The PMJDY celebrates success on its website, but thousands of Marys remain outside the banking system. This won’t change unless the scheme alters both design and implementation A few months ago, when the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) was still being spoken of as a success for the largest number of accounts opened in a day, earning the government a Guinness world record, I visited the branch of a...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: A huge surge in public response has pushed the number of comments on the telecom department panel's net neutrality recommendations well past the 50,000 mark, with almost all seeking free and equal access to the web. At last count on Sunday, the responses to the report on the mygov.in portal were 52,172, a far cry from around 700 comments posted on August 14, and increasing by...