Go Solar for Digital India by Solar powered CSCs
The multi-tier digital infrastructure is the cornerstone of implementation of Digital India, which has the focus on delivery of services to citizens located in the remote corners of the country. These are the locations, which suffer most from lack of uninterrupted quality power. Many e-governance initiatives rolled out in rural India experience worse power and bandwidth conditions.
Intended benefits from those schemes cannot be derived for these reasons.
The Digital India programme, in its nine key action areas, aggressively suggests online disposition of all informational and transactional citizen services, broadband connectivity through optical fibres and all of this would remain a dream in the absence of continuous power in remote corners of the country. Solar electricity systems can effectively meet the demand of power in dispersed locations, till grid power can penetrate deep in far-flung locations.
With subsidies and other policies, Centre is trying to make it easier for all sectors of residence to go with rooftop solar panels.
But lack of power in these areas gives rise to the question that “Can India bridge this digital divide?”
Countrywide information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure is a prerequisite for the comprehensive implementation of e-governance and more inclusive Digital India programme. One of the key learnings from the implementation of ongoing nationwide core and support e-gov infrastructure is the lack of uninterrupted and reliable basic electricity in rural India, even at the block level.
This experience has been evident in case of the 1,00,000 internet-enabled common services center (CSC) outlets for government and private service delivery, being established at the village/ panchayat level, or similarly, in the implementation of the statewide area network
(SWAN), having more than 6,000 points of presence of electronic infrastructure in district towns and rural blocks.
The advantage of solar energy is that it is available throughout the peak load demand time of the day and therefore it would substantially bring down the peak energy costs, obviating the need to build additional generation and transmission capacity. Solar energy conversion equipment systems have a longer life and need lesser maintenance with low running costs and hence provide higher energy infrastructure security. Unlike conventional thermal power generation from coal, solar energy generation does not cause pollution and generate clean power and would help in establishing multi-tier digital infrastructures.