Data is a utility- A political perspective and a campaign for digital India.

In the Era of everywhere connectivity of everything or many things around us, the machines or even things will find their buddy and makes the humans life easy. I think about the ‘last man’ again here, as the next society will be heavily based on data as medium of connectivity and communication, and many of the services for ordinary purpose, and also for critical purpose, would be based on data. So everyone or even the ‘last one’ who is vital to society need to be connected. Therefore data has its own political streak, like power, water or roads. As we develop infrastructure for power, road etc. for reaching out to remote underdeveloped villages, so the need for data too, and this benefit should be there on political matrix.

It’s not that we are silent here, the ‘Govt of India’ is running programs to connect villages on fiber network under the project named ‘NOFN’ --National Optical Fibre Network 

(NOFN) is a project initiated in 2011 and funded by Universal Service Obligation Fund to provide broadband connectivity to over two lakh (200,000) Gram panchayats of India at an initial cost of ₹20,000 crore ($3 billion). It aimed at using existing fiber optical network of Central utilities - BSNL, RailTel and Power Grid - to provide internet connectivity to gram panchayats.^[1] The project intended to enable the government of India to provide e-services and e-applications nationally. A special purpose vehicle Bharat Broadband Network Limited (BBNL) was created as a Public Sector Undertaking (PSU) under the Companies Act of 1956 for the execution of the project. The GPON order for BBNL to connect 200,000 villages was awarded to United Telecoms Limited (UTL).

This initiative was for achieving last mile connectivity to provide digital services to remote site, and this was taken for political gain too, as new govt under the leader ship of ‘Shri Narendra Modi ji’ has taken it to redefine under Digital India campaign.

There are other projects too under the similar initiatives, one is here I found at ‘economic times’ --Digital Village: India's ambitious free WiFi project covering 1,000 gram panchayats.

In a bid to provide last-mile connectivity in far-flung areas-the biggest impediment towards a digital and cashless economy -the government is embarking on an ambitious project to provide hing
Apart from providing Internet connectivity for mass use, the programme seeks to enable delivery of services like health and education.

Called Digital Village, the pilot project will initially be rolled out in as many as 1,050 gram panchayats. “The project is a public/private partnership, and will be driven through the common service centres (CSCs),“ Aruna Sundararajan, secretary at Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), told ET. “We'll be partnering with different service providers to do it.“

We are aware of ‘free basics’ from facebook, Google WiFi, and recently Reliance jio’s free voice campaign etc., and its vested interest etc. too, but the efforts being there for last mile connectivity due to various reasons, political, economical, social etc.

The Crux is data everywhere, and data is like fuel here, the basic amenity need to utilize all these which is being projected, like education, health, entertainment, communication, safety, etc. for living. That’s why I said “DATA is a UTILITY”.

Apart from last mile connectivity we need last man to utilize, what the next generation society is going to project, to make him vital for the society.

Many services will be there as the basic rights for human as well citizens, so to avail that there must be basic rights to everyone to get data of certain quality, like mid-day meal or 2 to 3 rupees per kg rice etc.

I want to set this as campaign and those who agree on this may support this through likes and shares and suggestions. I thought to use social media to execute it, though I am very limited here but need help.