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Science and Technology

Digital India and Government Technology Policies

Indian Science: Scientists, Institutions, Robotics, Nanotechnology, Quantum Computing, Government Policies, Digital India, Cyber Security & Data Privacy

Paper II · Unit 2 Section 7 of 13 0 PYQs 38 min
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Digital India and Government Technology Policies

6.1 Digital India Programme

Launched on 1 July 2015 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Digital India is the Government of India's flagship programme to transform India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy. It operates across three vision areas: Digital Infrastructure, Digital Services, and Digital Literacy.

Aadhaar and Identities

  • UIDAI (Unique Identification Authority of India) manages Aadhaar — 12-digit biometric identity for every resident
  • 1.37 billion enrolled (2025)
  • Aadhaar-based authentication processes 50+ million verifications daily
  • The Aadhaar Act 2016 provides legislative framework

Payments

  • UPI (Unified Payments Interface): Launched August 2016 by NPCI. Real-time interbank mobile payment system using Virtual Payment Address (VPA). March 2025: 14.96 billion transactions; FY2024-25: Over 170 billion total UPI transactions.
    • UPI One World enables foreign visitors to transact
    • UPI123Pay enables feature phone users
    • India exports UPI to: Singapore (PayNow linkage), UAE, France, UK, Bhutan, Nepal, Sri Lanka
  • RuPay: India's domestic card payment network (NPCI) with 750 million+ cards issued.
  • FASTag: RFID-based electronic toll collection; 97%+ highway toll collection now digital.

Identity and Documents

  • DigiLocker: Cloud-based digital document wallet — stores verified copies of Aadhaar, PAN, driving licences, mark sheets, vehicle RC. 250 million+ users (2025). Eliminates need for physical documents.
  • e-Sanjeevani: National telemedicine service launched 2019 under National Health Mission. Conducted 250 million+ teleconsultations by 2025. Deployed in Ayushman Arogya Mandirs (Sub-Health Centres).

Governance

  • UMANG (Unified Mobile Application for New-age Governance): Single app integrating 1,800+ central and state government services. Launched 2017.
  • DigiYatra: Biometric-based airport check-in and boarding — 24 airports (2025); uses facial recognition linked to Aadhaar/passport.
  • CoWIN (Covid Vaccine Intelligence Network): Developed by MoHFW for COVID-19 vaccine administration — registered 2.5 billion vaccine doses, used as model globally.
  • GeM (Government e-Marketplace): Launched 2016 for procurement of goods and services by government ministries. GMV of Rs 4 lakh crore+ (cumulative to 2024).

Connectivity

  • BharatNet: World's largest rural broadband programme targeting all 2.5 lakh gram panchayats with optical fibre. Phase I (1 lakh GPs) completed 2017; Phase II and III ongoing. As of 2025, 2.14 lakh GPs connected.
  • PM-WANI (Prime Minister Wi-Fi Access Network Interface): Decentralised public Wi-Fi framework for hot spots in rural and semi-urban areas.

Commerce

  • ONDC (Open Network for Digital Commerce): Launched April 2022 by DPIIT. Open-source, interoperable e-commerce protocol (like UPI for commerce). Allows any buyer app to connect to any seller app without platform lock-in. Aims to democratise e-commerce for MSMEs, kirana stores, and farmers.

6.2 IndiaAI Mission (2024)

The IndiaAI Mission was approved in March 2024 with a budget of Rs 10,371 crore over 5 years (2024–2029), under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and operated through IndiaAI — a new independent business division under Digital India Corporation.

Seven Pillars of IndiaAI Mission

  1. IndiaAI Compute Capacity (AIRAWAT): National AI compute infrastructure — 10,000+ GPU cluster; hosted across C-DAC and private cloud facilities. Target: 10,000 GPU compute capacity at affordable access rates.
  2. IndiaAI Innovation Centre: Large-scale indigenous Foundation Models addressing Indian languages and domains (healthcare, agriculture, governance). Target: develop India's equivalent of LLMs.
  3. IndiaAI Datasets Platform: Open, curated datasets for AI training including Indian language corpora, health records, satellite imagery.
  4. IndiaAI Application Development Initiative: Sector-specific AI applications for healthcare (early disease detection), agriculture (crop advisory), education (adaptive learning), and governance (fraud detection).
  5. IndiaAI Future Skills: AI upskilling for 5 million by 2027; AI labs in 500 colleges.
  6. IndiaAI Startup Financing: Rs 2,000 crore fund for deep-tech AI startups.
  7. Safe and Trusted AI: Responsible AI guidelines, bias audits, algorithmic accountability frameworks.

AIRAWAT (PYQ 2023 — Q26a)

Full form — AI Research, Analytics and Knowledge Assimilation Platform. Infrastructure requirements include:

  • High-performance GPU clusters (NVIDIA H100/A100 class)
  • High-bandwidth memory systems
  • Low-latency interconnects (InfiniBand)
  • Parallel file systems for massive datasets
  • Cooling and power infrastructure
  • Cybersecurity frameworks

Indigenous LLMs (PYQ 2024 — Q27)

  • Krutrim AI (Ola founder Bhavish Aggarwal, 2024): India's first homegrown LLM trained on Indian languages. Handles 22 scheduled Indian languages.
  • OpenHathi (Sarvam AI, 2024): Hindi-first open-source LLM, based on Llama 2, trained on Hindi-English bilingual corpus.
  • Project Udaan (IIT Bombay + AI4Bharat): Neural machine translation for 22 Indian languages.
  • BhasaVerse (CDAC, 2024): AI model for 22 Indian languages including regional scripts.
  • AI4Bharat (IIT Madras): Open-source NLP tools for Indian languages — IndicBERT, IndicNMT, IndicASR (speech recognition).

6.3 NITI Aayog's National Strategy for AI (2018)

The National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence (#AIForAll) released by NITI Aayog in June 2018 was India's first official AI strategy document. It identified 5 focus sectors for AI application:

  • Healthcare
  • Agriculture
  • Education
  • Smart Cities & Infrastructure
  • Smart Mobility & Transportation

It advocated a "Garage to Global" approach — developing AI solutions in India for India and the world.