It’s a hot and dull afternoon. The streets of Mohali district in Punjab are almost empty. The dullness is also reflected inside the Mohali Sewa Kendra. Except for four women there is nobody inside the centre. Wearing uniformed pale blue salwar kameez and an orange dupatta, the women are quietly working behind their counters. The silence is disrupted every now and then with a sudden clatte
It’s common knowledge that banks thrive on interest spread, the difference between the rate they charge borrowers and the rate they pay depositors. Bank profits hinge on those vital two to five percentage points, besides small service charges for cheque books, ATM transactions and so on. Enter a paradox: banks which accept deposits but do not lend. So, are they viable? That
Mozilla is working on two separate goals in net neutrality. One is to bring everyone online; ensure that everyone has access to the internet. The other is to ensure that the network should remain open and diverse. We want people to have access to the whole diversity of the internet and not just in some parts. The debate on neutrality has been playing in India for two years in a more dev
As one enters the State Senior Secondary School, Kalyana, in Kangra district – some 15 km from Dharamsala – one sees children from different age groups scattered all across the playground. In the basketball court, boys and girls, wearing maroon sweaters, sitting in separate rows are taking an exam. A short distance from there a class is underway for standard 6 students. Some
According to the department of telecommunications (DoT), the problem of call drops is more severe indoors. DoT`s observation is derived from the feedback it received from consumers through an IVRS facility that it launched in December 2016. “Since the launch of the IVRS system on December 23 till February 28, 16,61,640 successful outbound ca
A long queue of women, infants in their arms, extends outside the immunisation room at the community health centre (CHC) in Bhangel village, Noida, a pink double-storey building beside a bustling market. Unmindful of the chit-chatting and baby babble, Mariamma Samuel, an auxiliary nurse-cum-midwife, administers vaccines to infants and pregnant women. It’s 12:30 pm on an immunisa
The government has taken cognizance of the delay in BharatNet project and has taken corrective measures, the Lok Sabha was informed. Union minister Manoj Sinha said that BharatNet project is being implemented with the objective to create network infrastructure for providing Broadband connectivity of 100 Mbps to all Gram Panchayats (GPs) (approx. 2,50,000) in the
On AadhaarPay Today more than 112 crore people have the Aadhaar card. Approximately 40 crore people have linked their Aadhaar numbers to their bank accounts. We already have a system of Aadhaar authentication in place. To promote cashless economy, we have to consider all different segments of people. We have people who are well e
India has come a long way, from waiting for years to acquire a simple landline phone connection to a mobile phone in every hand. With the growth of mobile network, phone access has grown almost 100-fold in the last 20 years. This increase in the number of mobile phone users has also given a push to internet penetration, which further supports the Digital India initiative. &
The Digital India programme aims to transform the country into a digitally empowered society. But can this programme be successful with only a few projects being implemented or piloted at a few places as early harvest programme? The initiative needs a holistic approach in implementation rather than banking on limited successes of a few projects. Though its initiatives like gov
In an email interaction with Pratap Vikram Singh, the TRAI chief talks about the various regulatory aspects of providing reliable and ubiquitous internet to the masses. How will the Digital India programme succeed in absence of ubiquitous, reliable and affordable internet? One of the three areas on which t
For long, residents of Sultanpur village would travel 17 kms to the district office in Raj Nagar, Ghaziabad, if they needed to get birth, death or caste certificates or PAN or ration cards. If these documents were needed urgently, it was taken for granted that they’d have to approach a tout who would charge them anything between Rs 500 and Rs 2,000. A common services centre (CSC), establi
Like millions of social media addicts, Shahnaz, who cooks in people’s homes for a living and lives in Gautampuri, Delhi, loves WhatsApp. Hopping from kitchen to kitchen, she likes to stay in touch with family and friends. Her two daughters and son, all school-going, make use of the internet connection on their mother’s phone. She also gets messages about homework and timetable chang
India seems to be in a tearing hurry to allow wireless internet access at a much, much higher speed. 4G could soon become passé as 5G seems to be just round the corner. Telecom secretary JS Deepak has said in Barcelona that the government was working to ensure that it takes a leap on 5G and is issuing guidelines on use of high frequency spectrum bands.&nb
Ever since the unique identity number, or Aadhaar, was introduced in India, it has carefully avoided spelling out its status – whether it is mandatory or not. The official stance, even after a change in government, remains that Aadhaar is ‘essential’ to avail specific services but it is voluntary on the citizen to apply for it or not. The long-awaited law, passed last year, ha
Home ministry, which is supposed to maintain the internal security in the country, has reportedly fallen prey to cybercrime. On February 12, reports of ministry of home affairs (MHA) web portal getting hacked came to the fore. The website was immediately taken down for some time by national informatics centre in response to threat. Although, the ministry has denied any hacking ac
Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has ensured that 12 websites and 12 mobile applications available on the Google Playstore are shut down and has directed to close down 26 more such fraudulent and illegal websites/applications. It came to the notice of UIDAI that these websites and mobile applications downloadable through Google Playstore were pro
For budget 2017-18 the government has allocated Rs 10,000 crore to Bharat Net project, which aims to provide high-speed broadband connectivity to 2.5 lakh gram panchayats across the country. Finance minister Arun Jaitley said that 1.5 lakh kilometre of optical fiber will be laid with Wi-Fi hotspots across the villages, making high-speed broadband connectivity av
Current tensions and anticipated future issues alike must be addressed to ensure the successful development of a robust digital economy for all stakeholders, said a World Economic Forum white paper. The white paper on “Shaping the Future Implications of Digital Media for Society Valuing Personal Data and Rebuilding Trust” said that in this era of hyp
Pawan Kumar’s doctor prescribed him some medicines for three months. The monthly bill of his medicines came around Rs 1,600, minus Rs 50 – the discount given by his local chemist. But when he bought the same medicines online he got a discount of 25 percent. Kumar now prefers ordering medicines online, as they are “obviously cheaper”. Online pharmacy is a
