SME Times News Bureau | 02 Jul, 2015
As Prime Minister
Narendra Modi launched the "Digital India Week" here on Wednesday,
India Inc. committed an investment of Rs.450,000 crore (some $75 billion) for
the initiative that seeks to empower citizens by deploying IT and associated
tools.
Choosing no less than a sports stadium to launch the initiative where who's who
of India Inc. packed the rows, Prime Minister Modi said industry captains have
committed investments of Rs.450,000 crore toward "Digital India" and
create 1.8 million new jobs.
The prime minister also unveiled a logo for Digital India -- an umbrella
programme that seeks to transform India into a digitally-empowered, knowledge
economy with a host of initiatives for a synchronized and coordinated
engagement of the government and its agencies.
The prime minister said it was not enough for India to say that it is an
ancient civilization, and a country of 1.25 billion with favourable demography.
"Modern technology needs to be blended with these strengths," he
said.
He laid emphasis on useful technologies and said at one point India was
criticised for launching satellites but today these were helping the common
people. Farmers, for instance, are able to access weather forecasts.
"Similarly, the Digital India initiative is aimed at improving the lives
of the common people," Modi said, adding while India may have missed the
industrial revolution, it will not miss the IT revolution that is transforming
peoples' lives.
The Prime Minister assured full support to young entrepreneurs who wished to
launch start-ups. He called upon the youth to innovate and said "Design in
India" is as important as "Make in India".
The event also saw a host of industrialists announce millions of dollars of
investments in their own "digital" programmes. They included Reliance
Group's Anil Ambani, Reliance Industries' Mukesh Ambani, Bharti Group's Sunil
Mittal and Aditya Vikram Birla Group's Kumaramangalam Birla.
Others at the event included Delta group's Ping Cheng, Vedanta's Anil Agarwal,
Wipro chairman Azim Premji, Lava's Hari Om Rai, Airbus' Peter Gutsmeidl, Hero
Group's Pawan Munjal, and Nidec Corp's Mikio Katayama.
For the "Digital India" scheme, Modi has already been named the chair
of a high-powered panel to monitor and all existing and ongoing e-governance
initiatives. These will be revamped and aligned with the larger principles of
"Digital India", according to an official statement.
The larger goal of Digital India includes broadband connectivity in all
panchayats, Wi-Fi in all the schools and universities and public Wi-Fi hotspots
in all important cities by 2019. It will be deployed in delivering services in
areas like health, education, agriculture and banking.
The vision is centred on three key areas:
- Digital infrastructure as a utility to every citizen
- Governance and service on demand
- Digital empowerment of citizens.
Communications and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said, Wednesday marked the
launch of a host of pro-people products designed to make life easier and give
access in domains like e-education, e-health, e-agriculture, e-commerce and
even e-entertainment.
"The essence of India's Digital story is not to be told in the numbers of
phones, laptops or the internet use. India's vision of information technology
is not simply IT enabled-services, but IT-enabled society," he said.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the "Digital India Week" was part
of a series of programmes intended to give a new direction to the country in
terms of the IT revolution. He also announced that a "Skill India"
educational initiative will be unveiled next week.
The other initiatives launched under the "Digital India" programme on
Wednesday included:
- Digital locker system to minimize usage of physical documents and enable
their e-sharing via registered repositories.
- MyGov.in as an an online platform to engage citizens in governance through a
"Discuss, Do and Disseminate" approach.
- Swachh Bharat Mission Mobile app to achieve the goals set by this mission.
- e-Sign framework to allow citizens to digitally sign documents online using
Aadhaar.
- e-Hospital system for important healthcare services such as online
registration, fee payment, fixing doctors' appointments, online diagnostics and
checking blood availability online.
- National Scholarship Portal for beneficiaries from submission of application
to verification, sanction and disbursal.
- Digitize India Platform for large-scale digitization of records in the
country to facilitate efficient delivery of services to the citizens.
- Bharat Net programme as a high-speed digital highway to connect all 250,000
gram panchayat of country -- the worldÂ’s largest rural broadband project using
optical fibre.