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Abstract
Government of India prompted Digital India Program with an objective of transforming the country into “A Digitally Empowered Society and Knowledge Economy”. The program was launched in August 2014, aiming to work in the direction of three outcome zones:
- provision of digital infrastructure as a core utility
- on-demand e-service delivery
- digital empowerment of all citizens
An array of schemes and policies are continuously amalgamated under the aegis of Digital India Program, so as to achieve these outcomes. In the year 2018-19 a new outcome zone was added under the program i.e. the development of cutting age data infrastructure to support AI Innovations. As a result of new addition and to boost the program, the annual budget allocated to the program was almost doubled to Rs. 3,073 Crore in the year 2018-19. Digital India program does not mention anything related to gender equity or women empowerment in its policy documents, but from the popular dialogues by Union Cabinet Members it can assumed that the basic idea behind this program is basically digital designed for strengthening digital skills amongst women entrepreneurs and including women in mainstream delivery system. The present study strives for offering a critical analysis of Digital India Program and to evaluate the degree of gender-transformative change through all outcome zones. The paper also proposes recommendations to build digital environment in which there are more openings for women as well as contribution to gender equality.