Growth of Digital Economy in India

In News 

G20 offers India a chance to be the architect of a new digital economy.

About Digital Economy

• Digitalization acquires a critical element in the development of the modern economy, giving birth to an all new term- ‘Digital Economy’ as it promises to add a lot more within a short span of time. 
• Digitalization or the digital transformation of the economy is essentially the introduction of information and communication technologies in a sector in order to increase its efficiency, productivity, extents and competitiveness, thereby creating an innovative high-tech digital economy. 

Benefits 

• India’s digital vision is based on citizen centric services, where transparency and accountability are ensured as it envisions a kind of digital transformation that allows everyone – whether in rural or urban areas and irrespective of their economic or social status, to take ample benefits.
• Digital technologies are playing the role of a great equaliser by distributing the fruits of economic developments to all, thereby bringing sociological changes .
• India’s inclusive digital model is narrowing the digital divide among people and bringing benefits of technology to all segments of people, as less affluent states leapfrog to catch up with more affluent ones on dimensions such as internet subscriber growth, density of internet infrastructure and common service centres.
• Digital technologies such as data pooling, Artificial intelligence and others are now widely used to track and diagnose issues in agriculture, health, environment, logistics, jobs and skills market, e-governance, performing daily tasks such as navigating traffic, paying a bill, financial transactions and others.
• In human development, technology has always played a revolutionary role, changing the features of the labour force, creating a new face, form, pattern and process of work and bringing about wider economic and societal changes. 
• The digital economy has generated new job opportunities as new businesses are springing up. 
  • It has also created new job roles spread all over the world.
• The digital economy has increased the transparency of businesses as they can now use technology to share information with their customers.

Related Initiatives and Their Achievements 

• Over the last 75 years, India has executed many citizen-friendly programmes.
  • Through the Digital India Programme, the Government of India is focusing much on creating a strong foundation of digital infrastructure and expanding digital access to all, creating tremendous economic value and empowerment of citizens as new digital applications permeate sector after sector. 
  • Today, over 20 platforms support the Digital India initiative, touching over a billion lives and presenting a $700 billion opportunity for India by 2030.

• Today, over 775 million Indians have access to broadband services, telemedicine has grown 500%, Co-Win enabled over 2 billion vaccination doses, the Aadhaar ecosystem has scaled to 1.3 billion registrations, and Bhim UPI clocked over 6.28 billion transactions as of July 2022. 
• Other initiatives 
  • Digitisation of Post Offices
  • Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojna 
  • DigiLocker
  • BharatNet
  • Smart Cities
  • Digital Rupee

Issues 

• The increased use of technology has also led to an increase in cybercrime. 
  • This is because criminals can now use technology to commit crimes like identity theft, fraud, and money laundering.
• The digitisation of businesses requires heavy investments in technology. 
  • This is a challenge for small businesses which might not have the resources to invest in technology.
• The increased use of technology in the digital economy has led to an increase in the number of e-waste and heavy carbon footprint. 

Conclusion and Way Ahead 

• Digital transformation must be intentionally inclusive and thoughtfully designed and implemented to ensure that all are well taken care of and no one is left behind.
• There is a need for Internet users to train themselves on the best practices of cybersecurity and follow dos and don’ts to ensure a safe digital economy,
  • user awareness would help with digital transformations in future.
•  The government could create a financial institution through which loans can be given at zero or very low interest rates to players who are rolling out digital communications infrastructure.

• We need to bring in changes in our approach to education and training by placing more emphasis on science, technology, engineering, maths, soft skills, resilience, skilling, re-skilling, up-skill of the people in general.