-IANS/United Nations The country ranked 80 among 133 developing countries on percentage of households with internet in 2014 India's global position in Broadband Penetration dropped from 125 in 2013 to 131 in 2014 out of 189 countries, according to the State of Broadband report by the United Nations. The UN Broadband Commission's report said 57% of the world's people remain offline and unable to take advantage of the enormous economic and social benefits...

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 Hindustan Times The government is gearing up for its next big mission, a Rs. 113,000-crore plan that aims to usher in a digital revolution by moving everything online, from education to public services to bureaucracy. Aptly called ‘e-kranti', it comes under the Narendra Modi government's ‘Digital India' initiative and is quite simply the world's most ambitious broadband project - but one that will have to overcome countless hurdles, big and small....

-Economic and Political Weekly   The emphasis on use of digital technologies to bridge the "rural-urban gap" in the union budget is limited to high talk and minimal allocations. The need for a more comprehensive and peoples' participation-oriented rural action plan should have been the focus while setting sectoral allocations, but that is not to be in this mid-year budget. Vipul Mudgal (vipulmudgal@gmail.com) heads the Inclusive Media for Change project at the Centre...

-The United Nations   Releasing new statistics today, the United Nations International Telecommunications Union (ITU) announced that by end 2014, there will be nearly three billion Internet users - two-thirds of them from the developing world - with mobile-Broadband Penetration approaching 32 per cent. "The newly released ICT [information and communications technology] figures confirm once again that information and communication technologies continue to be the key drivers of the information society," said Hamadoun...