Despite the easy availability of technology, resources and efficient manpower, there still exists rampant hunger in our country (“The grand delusion of Digital India,” Oct.6). I wonder what kind of development are we aspiring for when even though someone at the bottom of the ladder like a hawker has access to a mobile phone, there is also a high possibility of him dying of hunger. Growth can never be considered enough in a nation where people are deprived of their basic rights of food, health and a clean environment.
Technology can make a nation digitally competitive but no nation can achieve holistic growth without addressing the issue of poverty..
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The vision of the ‘Digital India’ programme is to transform India into a knowledge economy. Even though it is not aimed at reducing poverty, it will help in an easy implementation of poverty reduction programmes. In the near future, India will be the country having the most number of people of working-age population. However, if they are not educated and trained appropriately, we won’t be able to reap any demographic dividend. Digital India mission can help us in this regard.
However, we cannot forget the fact that the interest and urgency that the government shows in implementing ‘Digital India’ programme is not seen in other poverty alleviation schemes. That is the reason why majority of rural Indians have mobile phones but are deprived of many of the basic needs.
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Swathi Krishna K,
Kozhikode
When will our leaders realise that solutions like broadband connectivity by themselves can never adequately address the problems of the rural sector and the impoverished millions of the country in general? Broadband connectivity hardly means anything to farmers driven to suicide due to unremunerative prices, lack of warehouses to store their produce and a lack of a proper system of insurance against the vagaries of weather. It means nothing to the poor men and women who do not know where their next meal is going to come from. It means nothing to the destitute and homeless millions in north Indian cities and towns who have to shiver through wintry nights, sometimes perishing in the process. The first thing we need today is a leadership which can understand and empathise with the reality as it exists outside the islands of prosperity that we have created in this country, something the noble soul Mahatma Gandhi could do. For starters, I recommend that the idea of PURA (Providing Urban Amenities in Rural Areas), propounded by the late President APJ Abdul Kalam, be implemented.
G.G. Menon,
Tripunithura, Kerala