One thing that was extensively used during the last one and a half years was the Internet. Even those who had no Internet at home had to buy data packs, if not a high-speed wi-fi connection, to make sure that their children could stay connected with their schools, teachers and friends. Thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic, everything came to a halt during the lockdown, be it school, office, market, grocery or stationery store. Yet, an average middle class family had everything at its home.
 
The laptops that were ordinarily available for Rs. 35,000, started selling like hot cakes with an escalation of 15 to 20 per cent. Work-from-home furniture was a new product that acquired popularity on platforms like Amazon and Flipkart.
 
When people did not prefer to eat restaurant food from platforms like Swiggy or Zomato, they started providing services like delivery of documents, medicines, and grocery from one place to the other. The Swiggy genie could do things that you and I could not – move from one place to the other during the lockdown. This shows how dependent we became on this network of networks. Even now, it is close to impossible to imagine one’s life without the Net.
 
The government, too, relied on it. A range of services from issuing movement passes, spreading information on Covid-19, direct transfer benefit, information on bed availability, to remote medical and counselling services were available online as the offices had to be shut. 

Telemedicine acquired a new dimension. The CoWin portal or the much-popular Arogya Setu app could not have gained popularity but for the availability of the Internet. However, one area that remained bereft of this connectivity were the villages.
 
The much-touted project, “national optical fibre network” which became BharatNet during the BJP regime, could not progress much. The ambitious project was started in 2011 to provide high-speed Internet in the villages by connecting 2,50,000 gram panchayats through optical fibre. The project was running at a snail’s pace during the UPA government. It didn’t acquire much speed under the BJP-led NDA government, either. This is despite the emphasis the Modi government made on digital India.
 
The Portulans Institute conducted a detailed study on the growth of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in 134 countries. The report talks about an index -- Networked Readiness Index (NRI) -- to calculate the extent of preparedness of a country to adopt and harness the benefits of ICT. Lower the index, the better is the position and hence the ranking.
 
The NRI 2020 placed India at the 88th rank globally out of 134 countries. In fact, we were at the 83rd position in 2014. Over the last six years, India has slipped by 5 points on this scale! A project that started in 2011 could have given added value for people, separated by Covid-19, had the government showed enough seriousness.
 
The initial aim of the project was to connect six lakh villages with broadband with a cost of Rs. 20,000 crore by December 2013. However, conflicting opinions on the type of fibre to be used, bureaucratic delays and wrong cost projection delayed the project. The connectivity could reach only a few hundred villages in the first three years. In fact, the entire project cost was utilised in three pilot projects alone! The project was downsized to 1,10,000 panchayats from 2,50,000 panchayats.
 
Be that as it may, with the NDA government’s focus on digitisation, the project should have acquired lightning speed. However, a recent report published in the Indian Express showed that the project has failed to achieve its outcome. It shows that a total of only 1,56,883 gram panchayats were service ready as on June 25, 2021. In that sense, they had the necessary equipment in place to provide Internet facilities. Even out of these, only 1,50,744 gram panchayats had started providing these services.
 
What is shocking is that 75 per cent of these panchayats were made service-ready during phase one of the project. The optical fibre has been laid down in 1,73,233 gram panchayats. Again, phase one of the project produced much better results than phase two, in which only 49,579 panchayats got the cables. The entire project was supposed to be completed by March 2020. The project aimed at connecting 1 lakh panchayats by 2019 and another 1.5 lakh by March 2020 in phase one and two respectively.
 
Clearly, there is a huge backlog. We cannot even blame Covid-19 for this delay as the entire work should have been completed before the advent of the pandemic. If we had Internet connectivity by March 2020 in all the villages of India, our children would have had access to education during the lockdown. 

They would not have unlearned years of lessons that they acquired in a few months as revealed by the field studies conducted by Azim Premji University. People would have been more sensitive about Covid-19. For some staying in very remote villages, the virus is still a thing of imagination, existing only in newspaper headlines. That is the extent of ignorance.
 
The government has often been changing the deadlines. This seems to have become a routine. In fact, it should have thought of completing the project during the lockdown last year. When people had no source of income, it would have given much-needed employment in the villages considering the fact that the first wave hardly affected the villages.
 
Meanwhile, another scheme in the name of PM-WANI was announced last December. Like the public call offices (PCOs) of ester-years, the prime minister announced the setting up of public data offices (PDOs) at various places for deploying Wi-fi hotspots and access points at the local stores and neighbourhood shops.
 
The initial trials were done throughout the country in 2017. At that time, it was mandatory to obtain a licence from the Directorate of Telecom (DoT). The PDO owner had to pay 8 per cent of the revenue as licence fee to the DoT. Now the government has relaxed the licence requirement. The PDO owner has to obtain registration from the government.
 
However, there is no clarity on the charges that the users will have to pay. Traditionally, the concept of PCO had generated employment for a large number of people. Will PDOs be able to generate that kind of revenue? Unlikely, as the prices for mobile Internet have gone down over the years.  

The cost of optical fibre cable for public Wi-Fi will be funded by the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF) along with private players like Airtel, Reliance, Tata, and Vodafone. The scheme can prove to be revolutionary in providing Internet access to the last-mile user. But how successful it will be is yet to be seen.
 
As far as BharatNet is concerned, the government has recently announced a revised implementation strategy through public-private partnerships at a cost of Rs. 29,430 crore to connect 3,60,000 villages in 16 states. The project that started with an estimated budget of Rs. 20,000 crore has already spent more than Rs 60,000 crore.
 
People in the villages are still deprived of their right to information technology. They still have to stand on their rooftops or outside their home to get a fair bandwidth on mobile networks. The project that would have achieved its outcomes by now will have to be initiated again.
 
If this is the way things are to be, how can we imagine eliminating the digital divide between India and Bharath. At a time when experts are talking about a third wave of the pandemic, we do not know when our children will be able to access schools. The way the virus has behaved so far, no one can estimate how long it will take for the world to be normal. 

In such a scenario, BharatNet would have proved to be a ray of hope for the people staying in the remote corners of the country. But this seems to be a distant dream even now.