Digital India: A vision to empower rural India Dr. Vij Dimpal Associate Professor, Dept. of Economics, MMH College, Ghaziabad (UP), India. Email id: dimpal.vij@rediffmail.com Online published on 10 October, 2018. Abstract India is a land of villages with 68% of people living in around 6, 49, 481 villages. Without prospering our villages India cannot progress. Since independence various programmes have been initiated to develop Indian villages but failed. Indian villages look far behind in comparison to urban India. The coming age is of knowledge economy. With increasing use of smart phone, it is possible now to provide different services with one click. To bridge the gap of digital divide between rural and urban India, Indian government has launched a program “Digital India' on July 1, 2015 with well-defined objective of connecting rural areas with high speed internet network and improving digital literacy. Digital India is a dream project of Indian government to ensure that government services are made available to all citizens electronically and digitally anywhere, anytime, on any device that is easy to use, highly available and secured. It is to transform India into a knowledge economy and digitally empowered society with good governance for all citizens. The programme offers a number of digital solutions in almost all sectors education, health, agriculture, administration, financial inclusion etc. This paper is a modest attempt to find out the impact of Digital India in empowering rural India, its challenges and what other initiatives can be taken in it to make it more effective so that urban-rural digital divide may be filled and our villages may also develop and reap the benefits of digital revolution that is taking place all around the world. Top Keywords Digital India, Rural India, Empowerment, Digital Divide, Knowledge Economy. Top |