GS3 PYQ(Mains Answer Writing): E- Governance | Indian Economy for UPSC CSE PDF Download

“The emergence of Fourth Industrial Revolution (Digital Revolution) has initiated eGovernance as an integral part of government”. Discuss (UPSC GS3 Mains)

Unlike the other three industrial revolutions, the Fourth Industrial Revolution is just not driven by technology only. It is about the convergence of physical, digital and biological spheres where technologies with the purpose of creating an inclusive growth environment come together helping every stakeholder to harness this change and progression. Since the digital world is important to facilitate the reach of physical and biological worlds, e-Governance has become an integral part of the government.
The impact on government 

• The Digital India campaign has taken the telecom data accessibility to the nook and corner of the villages of India. In the past four-and-a-half years, the government has taken the initiative to strengthen the country’s telecom infrastructure by investing six times more than before in this infrastructure. 
• While there were only 70 million people in India with a digital identity in 2014, today more than 120 million people of India have Aadhar card, their digital identity. 
• India is going to achieve the goal of connecting all the 2.5 lakh panchayats in the country with optical fiber. 
• Today India is reckoned as one of the world’s largest digital infrastructure countries. Unique interfaces like Aadhaar, unified payment interface i.e. UPI, e-sign, e-national agricultural market ie ENAM, government e-market place i.e. GEM, digi-locker are helping India become a technology leader through Artificial Intelligence. 
• India has already developed a national strategy to prepare for the development of AI research based robbers eco system in India. Following the vision of inclusive growth “sabkasath, sabkavikas”, the government has now given a call of “Artificial Intelligence for all”. The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) confronts governments with a good news, bad news scenario. 
• As the physical, digital, and biological worlds continue to converge, new technologies and platforms will increasingly enable citizens to engage with governments, voice their opinions, coordinate their efforts, and even circumvent the supervision of public authorities. 
• Simultaneously, governments will gain new technological powers to increase their control over populations, based on pervasive surveillance systems and the ability to control digital infrastructure. 
• On the whole, however, governments will increasingly face pressure to change their current approach to public engagement and policymaking, as their central role of conducting policydiminishes owing to new sources of competition and the redistribution and decentralization of power that new technologies make possible. What Can Be Done by Goverment? Governments need to address four key areas if they hope to harness the full potential of 4IR. 
• First, governments must cultivate as full an understanding of the future as possible, knowing what the opportunities and risks ahead are, as well as what their applications would be to the world, to individual countries, and to the specific workings of government.  
• Second, they need to ensure their countries have the infrastructure in place to benefit from the enormous advantages of technological change, and they need to address the risks of cybersecurity —whether criminally or politically motivated. Government needs to be an enabler of change, even if it does not itself seek to “pick winners” or manage the market. 
• Third, they must develop an understanding of the potential impact of change on the role of government, the relationship between individual citizens and companies, and other organizations, in the future. 
• Fourth, governments need to maintain a social cohesion in an era of potentially major disruption, such as instability in the labor market and significant changes in wealth distribution. 

Conclusion
In the end, We need to shape a future that works for all of us by putting people first and empowering them. In its most pessimistic, dehumanized form, the Fourth Industrial Revolution may indeed have the potential to “robotize” humanity and thus to deprive us of our heart and soul. But as a complement to the best parts of human nature—creativity, empathy, stewardship—it can also lift humanity into a new collective and moral consciousness based on a shared sense of destiny. It is incumbent on us all to make sure the latter prevails.