The Centre’s ambitious Digital India program is facing multiple challenges in successful implementation due to lack of clarity in policies and infrastructural bottlenecks, according to a joint report by Assocham-Deloitte.
The issues pertaining to taxation and other regulatory guidelines have proved to be roadblocks in advancing with the programme, while contracting challenges also played a spoilsport, the report said.
According to PTI, the report mentioned that some of the common policy hurdles include lack of clarity in foreign direct investment (FDI) policies, which have impacted the growth of e-commerce. Transport services like Uber have had frequent run-ins with local governments due to legacy policy frameworks which have not become attuned to the changing business landscape.
Moreover, many request for proposals (RFPs) issued by the government are not being picked up by competent private sector organisations since they are not commercially viable, the report added.
The report also mentioned that the biggest challenge faced by Digital India program is the slow/delayed infrastructure development. Spectrum availability in Indian metros is about a tenth of the same in cities in developed countries. This has put a major roadblock in providing high speed data services.
The report estimated that India needs over 80 lakhs hotspots as against the availability of about 31,000 hotspots at present to reach the global level of one Wi-Fi hotspot penetration for every 150 people.
