Last week PM Narendra Modi unveiled his government’s Digital India programme. By any measure, it is a huge exercise. Even if the government manages to achieve 50 per cent of what it has set out to do, it would change lives of millions of Indians. If implemented in earnest, Digital India has the potential to…
In an innovative move to educate rural women about the internet, Tata Trusts and Google India announced a special programme to send 1,000 specially designed ‘Internet Cycle Carts’ to remote villages. Built on the back of a regular bicycle, the carts are modelled on India’s traditional distribution system used to ferry everything from ice-creams to…
The Narendra Modi government’s Digital India claim and programme — following on the heels of Make in India and Skill India — is three-pronged. One, it aims to build infrastructure and provide the internet as a utility to every citizen. Two, it promises to improve service delivery by making services available online. And three, it…
A scheme to link India’s 2.5 lakh villages with better internet connectivity is likely to be announced when Prime Minister Narendra Modi flags off a Rs 1 lakh crore programme on Wednesday aimed at wiping out India’s digital divide. Preparations are in full swing for the Prime Minister to launch the week-long programme — Digital…
Facebook has rolled out a new version of its app for Android phones in India that is aimed at users with slow and spotty network connections. The app, Facebook Lite, has been available in Europe since it was launched on June 4. It is a lighter version – with a size of just 430 KB…
Scaling on the optical fibre network, the nation is all set to march on the digital path this week when Prime Minister Narendra Modi launches a Rs one lakh crore programme aimed at wiping out the digital divide. The programme, envisaged by Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY), with coordination with ministry of communications…
Do you spend your evenings sitting in the kitchen, counting how long it takes to fill a bucket of water from your cold tap, then sending angry emails to your water supplier when it’s not filling as fast as Simon’s identical bucket is three doors down on the same street? Probably not. That would be…
The use of social media in rural India has grown 100 per cent in the past year with 25 million people using the Internet to access Twitter and Facebook, according to a report. “Accessing social media is one of the key reasons for people to access the Internet. In fact, for many people accessing the…
To enable hassle-free access to documents such as school certificates for renewing passports or download school textbooks free of cost, the Modi government is all set to launch a one-stop shop shortly. Starting 1 July, the government will launch many projects under Modi’s $18 billion ‘Digital India’ initiative, one of them being ‘eBasta’. “eBasta is…
In the film Elysium, the ultra-rich have left an apocalyptic Earth ravaged by global warming and overpopulation. Their utopian colony orbits high above Earth which festers below. Science fiction, but Silicon Valley techno-utopians also dream of rising above the planet’s problems. The Seasteading Institute, for example, seeks to create floating cities far enough from land…