What is the key objective of the Digital India initiative launched in 2015?

Concept — A national mission of this kind is written at three levels, and the mission's own programme document is what fixes them: a vision, the outcome-level statement of what the country as a whole is to become; pillars, the delivery mechanisms built to reach that outcome; and schemes, the individual projects sitting under each pillar. When that document is the source, the key objective asked for is the vision-level statement it records, while a pillar's coverage figure or one sector's target sits a level below it.

Application — Digital India was launched by the Government of India on 1 July 2015, with the Department of Electronics and Information Technology - renamed the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology in 2016 - as the nodal body. Its programme document records the vision as transforming India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy; the shorter phrase, a digitally empowered society and economy, is that same vision statement with the qualifier abbreviated. The vision is set out through three vision areas:

• Digital infrastructure as a core utility to every citizen - high-speed broadband, mobile connectivity, a digital identity, a bank account and safe cyberspace within every household's reach.

• Governance and services on demand - seamless, paperless and cashless delivery of services that is integrated across departments and jurisdictions.

• Digital empowerment of citizens - universal digital literacy, digital resources in Indian languages, and cloud-based access to a citizen's own documents.

Cross-check — Each vision area is delivered through the nine pillars: broadband highways, universal access to mobile connectivity, public internet access, e-Governance reform, e-Kranti electronic service delivery, information for all, electronics manufacturing, IT for jobs, and early-harvest programmes. Reading the offered statements against that three-level structure:

• Internet access confined to urban and semi-urban regions is a coverage figure inside one pillar, and even that pillar's flagship, BharatNet, is scoped to every gram panchayat in the country rather than to one class of settlement.

• Promotion of traditional farming practices belongs to agricultural-methods policy; the mission's own farm-facing work is digital, through e-NAM market linkage and the Kisan advisory portals.

• A smaller number of online services in villages runs opposite to the e-Kranti pillar and the Common Service Centre network, whose measured output is the count of electronic services delivered in rural areas.

• Transforming India into a digitally empowered society and economy is the one offered statement pitched at the outcome level that all nine pillars exist to serve, and it reproduces the vision line of the programme document.

Result — So the key objective of Digital India is to transform India into a digitally empowered society and economy - the vision-level goal of the 1 July 2015 programme document, recorded there in full as a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy.