-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The government aims to transform India into a digitally empowered society through its Digital India programme but it may have a task at hand with a recent survey showing that only 18 per cent of those in the age group of 14-29 years in villages and 49 per cent in cities were able to operate a computer in 2014. Indicating the Herculean task awaiting the government,...

-The Hindu Business Line BusinessLine goes to villages, including those visited in 2014, to understand the progress of the ambitious National Optical Fibre Network. Unused infrastructure and low awareness tell a story of missed links In one corner of the Ramnagar village panchayat office, in Panisagar block of Tripura, is a defunct four-year-old computer. The machine, connected with a 10 mbps broadband line was supposed to bring digital services to this remote...

-Frontline The government’s passage of the Aadhaar Bill in complete disregard of even basic parliamentary procedures and in subversion of an ongoing judicial process puts at risk a number of constitutional rights and liberties of citizens. The benefits cited are just ploys to realise a neoliberal dream. “Congressmen are dancing as if [Aadhaar] was a herb for all cures. With the Supreme Court pulling up the Centre, people are now seeking...

-The Hindu Nauroti Devi, who never went to a school, uses a computer for village administration. VISAKHAPATNAM: Nauroti would hardly draw any attention from a passerby except maybe her traditional pallu over the head might draw a curious stare in South India. A Dalit who never went to school, after being elected sarpanch of Harmada village in Kishangarh Tehsil in Ajmer district of Rajasthan, she trained the government employee panchayat secretary on how...

-The Telegraph Bangalore: Two Karnataka districts have shown the way forward by e-filing chargesheets through a dedicated network that automatically routes the documents to the respective courts in tamper-proof form. The pilot project that started in 2014 has thrown up new possibilities in the way the judiciary and police function, with thousands of chargesheets having been e-filed from Mysore and Mandya. The state now plans to take the change to other districts. Around...