Mark Zuckerberg would be very glad if he visited the sole internet centre in Chandauli, a dusty village in Rajasthan’s Alwar district, about 170 km northeast of Jaipur. A third of the 20-odd kids glued to their laptop screens are visibly excited by the world wide web, and all of them, without exception, are on Facebook. Thirteen-year-old Vishal Kumar rapidly scrolls down his timeline and stops at a photo posted by a friend.Asked if his Facebook friends are all from his school, he says, “No, no, I have other friends, too.” He can type in English but does not understand much of it, but that is no impediment as he quickly shows us how Google Translate comes to his aid. He answers all our questions but never once takes his eyes off the screen.A few feet away, his friend Nasrat Sapwan says he is quite conversant with Facebook and has now got himself a Twitter account, though he is still learning the basics of the micro-blogging site. “We check our results online,” says Sapwan.About 10 km away, in Vijayamandir, Sonu Yadav, a final-year graduate student of political science and Hindi literature, is making a poster on Microsoft Paint. It is going to take him a few more weeks to be as comfortable with Facebook as Kumar and Sapwan though he is seven years older than them, but it is a welcome start. Yadav hopes to help his father in his real estate business with his computer and internet knowledge, according to his instructor.These boys would not have been able to enjoy what is taken for granted among their counterparts in the cities had it not been for the efforts of the Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF), a 12-year-old non-governmental organization whose objective is to provide last-mile connectivity in India’s hinterland. It operates 50 community information resource centres (CIRCs) across 20 states that train people in the basics of the computer for free or for as low as Rs 200 for a twomonth course. The CIRC in Chandauli is wirelessly connected to the CIRC in Vijayamandir, which relies on a BSNL broadband connection.The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government showed some intent on digitally connecting India’s villages when it announced the National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) in 2011. But it may not have been a top priority for a government besieged by a multitude of troubles and is now three years behind schedule. However, the current Narendra Modi-led dispensation has made it one of its focus areas, with the cabinet approving the ambitious ‘Digital India’ programme last week. As part of the plan, the government has set a target of providing broadband connectivity to 2.5 lakh villages (India has about 6.41 lakh villages, according to the 2011 Census) and making as many schools Wi-fi-enabled by 2019. Digital India will be the umbrella programme for the government’s initiatives in the area and will entail an expenditure of Rs 1.13 lakh crore in existing and new plans.About a third of India’s 252 million internet users, and a fourth of mobile internet users, are in rural areas. But internet penetration in villages, at 8.6% compared to 37.4% in cities, has a long way to go, and this is the statistic Digital India hopes to change. Broadband in India is currently defined as a connection with a minimum download speed of 512 kilo bytes per second (kbps), and India’s broadband penetration is a lowly 2%. As per a World Bank report, a 10% increase in a country’s broadband connections leads to a 1.38% rise in its gross domestic product.The government would do well to ride on the work already done by the private sector and civil society. Ganesh Natarajan, chair, Nasscom Foundation, which started the National Digital Literacy Mission in 2012 with Intel, Microsoft and other IT companies, says the initiative will now be aligned with the government’s efforts.The target of the mission is to make 10 lakh people digitally literate by end-2015. There have also been other private sector initiatives like ITC’s e-Choupal which links farmers to the web. Internet access in hitherto-unconnected areas does not only empower the local population but also makes them a lucrative market for businesses like financial services and e-commerce in the long run.“The target [of connecting 2.5 lakh villages by 2019] is very achievable if the corporate sector also spends on it. Everybody’s business is reliant on last-mile connectivity,” says Osama Manzar, founder-director of DEF. Rekha Jain, a professor at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, says while the investment may not fetch corporates a high return initially, it will eventually.Business potential aside, digital connectivity impacts rural folk in more ways than one. Kids currently are taught to use the computer not with a computer but with a book. “They are taught theory but they never get to use the computer,” says Mohammad Ameer, the Alwar coordinator of DEF. Nearly 1,400 school students in Chandauli have been trained to use computers since February. “Without computers there is no education, and everything is online these days,” says Liaqat Ali, a resident of the village. Ameer says even some women in Chandauli have started using the centre, despite initial resistance: “They come to the centre wanting to know when the next train leaves from Alwar to Delhi.” Delhi is 160 km from Alwar.Another focus area in the Digital India programme is e-governance. Besides making government services available on internet and mobile platforms, the key challenge will be to Take the 2.5 lakh panchayats in the country online. The government in 2007 launched the ‘e-Panchayat Mission Mode Programme’ with 11 software applications which help in digitizing a panchayat’s documents. DEF also has its initiative, called ‘Digital Panchayat’, which aims to make every panchayat member digitally literate. “There are three million panchayat members in the country and a third of them are women, and by educating them, you are also empowering the women,” says Manzar.Moreover, thanks to the internet, people in far-flung areas have access to better healthcare; and communities dependent on the arts and crafts, which were losing their way, are also getting a leg up in preserving and enhancing their local culture and traditions, which sometimes has economic benefits, too. For instance, Chanderi in central Madhya Pradesh, known for its handwoven sarees, has come a long way in the past four years, thanks to DEF’s efforts, with over two-thirds of its youth digitally literate having access to Wi-fi and, earlier this year, the launch of a website to sell its wares. Similarly, in Mungaska near Alwar, folk musician Umar Farooq is relying on the internet to ensure his Mewati community’s rich musical heritage is not lost. “We have recorded our traditional songs and will soon put them up on a website,” says Farooq, who got an invitation to play in Dubai next month on Facebook.Despite the obvious benefits of Digital India, it has its fair share of detractors. Rahul Khullar, chairman of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, in a recent interview to ET, said the plan was short on specifics. “Is it possible to get a birth or a death certificate online in Delhi? If not, what sort of applications are we really talking about? A lot more thinking and resources must be devoted to flesh out these applications instead of simply calling them e-health or e-education,” he observed. A noted academic with one of the country’s top educational institutions, requesting anonymity, says the current bandwidth of 100 mbps per panchayat is not sufficient. “It should be at least 1 gbps given that it serves three villages of around 10,000 people and videos are in HD [high definition] now. You can’t keep laying new fibre and the current architecture does not allow for the bandwidth to be revised.This is for the next 25 years. They should have thought this through,” he adds. Jain says the government should allow private players to do the last-mile connectivity. Subho Ray, president of the Internet and Mobile Association of India, says the involvement of private operators is key to the success of Digital India.“The government should look at the PPP model to ensure robust last-mile connectivity. For private players, price point has been an area of discontent, wherein they are questioning economic viability for sustenance,” he adds. But experts believe it is only a question of time before internet service providers find value in their rural clientele. But first it is up to the government to flesh out its plans and bring millions of India’s rural folk onto the information superhighway.