19. Digital India: Past, Present and Future

India is going through the most unprecedented transformation in human history of the free world. The decade of 2020–2030 in India will witness major, non-linear transformations, manifesting as global megatrends that will generate high-impact opportunities, at unseen speed and scale, necessitating just-in-time response agility from demand-supply-trust ecosystems built on a strong core of digital technologies and connectedness. This beseeches unprecedented, coordinated action from governments, market-players and citizens, for technology will emerge as the foundation for success. Although the Digital India initiatives are focused on reducing digital divide, a multi-pronged strategy is required for India to emerge as a leading digital economy. The objectives of any national level digital initiative can be successfully achieved if such a strategy is implemented through which the framework, policies, guidelines, reforms, and business process re-engineering are constantly evolved to address the needs and aspirations of citizens. With such national strategic catalysts, an overarching objective of “Minimum Government and Maximum Governance” can be achieved only when governments imbue the “Whole-of-the-Government Approach”. Several global Indices too must be leveraged further to benchmark the governance performance such as e-Governance Development Index (eGDI), Good Governance Index, e-Participation Index (ePI) and so on.