New Delhi: Push for high-speed internet availability, widened teledensity, lessening of the rural-urban digital divide and surge in internet subscriptions are some aspects that the economic survey lists in its latest report released Tuesday.
In a separate section on digital and physical infrastructure, the finance ministry spoke about the Centre’s push for a digital economy amidst challenges like the Ukraine-Russia war.
Some of the focus areas of digital infrastructure include “the availability of high-speed internet for delivery of services to citizens, unique digital identity, enabling citizen participation in digital and financial space, shareable private space on a public cloud (citizens can digitally store their documents, certificates, etc. and share them with public agencies or others without the need to physically submit them), and a safe and secure cyber-space”.
Telecom spectrum
A key facet of digital infrastructure includes the telecom sector, and, according to the survey, there was a “cumulative effort” from the “telecom players who widened their network bandwidth, the government’s enabling environment and consumers’ outreach for smartphones”.
The survey said there is a “200 per cent increase in rural internet subscriptions between 2015 and 2021 vis-a-vis 158 per cent in urban areas”, indicating that the Centre was keen on ‘bridging the gap’ in rural and urban digital connectivity.
“Today, the total telephone subscriber base in India stands at 117 crore (as of Nov 2022). While more than 97 per cent of the total subscribers are connected wirelessly (114.3 crore at the end of Nov 2022), 83.7 crore have internet connections as of June 2022,” the Economic Survey 2023 said.
“The overall tele density in India stood at 84.8 per cent, with wide differences across states. It ranged from 55.4 per cent in Bihar to 270.6 per cent in Delhi.”
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Overall teledensity, licence service area-wise up
Despite this headrush, the survey talled about how “in rural areas, the teledensity continues to be at much lower levels compared to urban areas.” There has been a considerable demand for digitalisation after many migrated back to rural areas during the Covid phase, it said.
“When majority of the workforce reverse-migrated to rural areas in search of livelihoods, agriculture (3.4 per cent growth in FY20-21) as well as MNREGS supported the domestic economy. The digital infrastructure created over the years in rural areas ensured transparent and timely payments to the beneficiaries directly into their account thus limiting their exposure to the virus,” the survey added.
However, the survey compared the digital penetration in rural areas since 2015 when Digital India began as an umbrella programme.
“Service delivery through digital tools has travelled a long way since then. We have added more internet subscribers in rural areas in the last 3 years (2019-21) than in their urban counterparts (95.76 million vis-a-vis 92.81 million in rural and urban areas respectively),” it said.
This was a result of dedicated digital drives through ambitious government schemes like BharatNet Project Scheme, Telecom Development Plan, Aspirational District Scheme, initiatives in North-Eastern Region through Comprehensive Telecom Development Plan and initiatives towards LWE-hit areas, it added.
Online schooling was cited as one of the key reasons why digital subscriptions increased in rural areas.
“As schooling went online for a considerable period even post-pandemic, the increase in internet subscriptions in rural areas helped mitigate learning loss significantly. This even facilitated the successful rollout of mass vaccination in rural areas,” it said.
There was an increase in the number of 4G mobile services as well.
Now the Centre intends to “provide 4G mobile services in 24,680 uncovered villages in remote and difficult areas, and 6,279 villages having only 2G/3G connectivity shall be upgraded to 4G”, according to some of the future forecasts mentioned in the survey.
Progress in digital public infra
The survey recounted the steps of Digital Public Infrastructure like the Aadhaar and the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) which comes under the Centre’s primary focus.
“In FY19, UPI accounted for 17 per cent of the country’s total 3,100 crore digital transactions. The next fiscal year saw UPI’s share rise to more than 27 per cent as it processed 1,250 crore transactions out of 4,600 crore digital transactions. In FY22, UPI accounted for 52 per cent of the total 8,840 crore financial digital transactions,” the survey said.
“On average, between FY19-22 (calendar year), growth in UPI-based transactions in value and volume terms have been 121 per cent and 115 per cent, respectively. Recently, in Dec 2022, UPI touched its highest-ever mark with 782 crore transactions worth ₹12.8 lakh crore.”
It also said that the platform became more popular “during the pandemic when UPI served as a critical lifeline, especially for small and micro merchants”.
UPI will also be facilitating international remittances from countries like Singapore, the UAE, France, and the Netherlands among others.
”Initiative towards the discussion on cross-border remittances will help reduce the cost incurred and procedures involved towards money transfer at present by the migrant workers. The smooth transfer of money will increase the total value of remittances, increasing their impact on economic development,” the survey explained.
Another key arm of this structure is the recently introduced ONDC platform. “ONDC aims to go beyond the current platform-centric digital commerce model where the buyer and seller can use the same platform or application for transactions. It is a network-based open protocol that would connect all the buyers and sellers on the network thus bringing better visibility across the Business-to-Consumer (B2C) & Business-to-Business (B2B) landscape,” the survey explained.
This platform was built to ensure that their e-commerce sector is not entirely dependent on a platform-centric approach.
Through this survey, the finance ministry highlighted the use of open-source networks to “improve the productivity of human capital.”
“In order to promote open collaborative software development of e-governance applications, a platform called OpenForge has been developed. Through OpenForge, the use of open-source software and sharing and reuse of e-governance-related source code is promoted. As on 16 January 2023, there are 10,328 users on the platform, with 2,205 projects 14,” the survey read.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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