The government is expecting investments to the tune of billions of dollars during the Digital India week, which will be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on July 1. “As per estimates are concerned, we expect billions of dollars investment (in Digital India week),” telecom minister Ravi Shankar Prasad told reporters on Saturday, while announcing details of the event.
For the first time, a digital summit has been planned at such huge scale and with such splendid grandeur that the launch has been moved out of the boundaries of the Vigyan Bhawan to Indira Gandhi Stadium in the Capital. Prasad said the turnout would be nothing less than 10,000 people, with over 400 top-notch executives from the industry attending. Tata Group’s Cyrus Mistry, Reliance Industries’ Mukesh Ambani, Wipro’s Azim Premji, Hero MotoCorp’s Pawan Munjal, Bharti Group’s Sunil Mittal and Aditya Birla Group’s Kumarmangalam Birla are a few of them.
In the past one year, global heads of technology companies met Modi and assured their support to the campaign, be it Facebook, Google or Microsoft. However, at the last hour, none of the global executives from these behemoths will be attending the opening summit, citing various reasons. NR Narayana Murthy will also not attend due to prior engagements.
Digital India will broadly aim at four things: bridging the digital divide, improving governance, harnessing power in the common man’s hand, and a politically and ideologically neutral campaign. The idea is to build a digital infrastructure and provide it as a utility to every individual, to provide government services on demand and digitally empower the citizens, elaborated Prasad. Among thew various apps to be launched, the e-hospital app has already been installed in three hospitals, said Prasad. This will enable patients to register for check-ups and get appointments. Similarly, for the scholarship portal, students from anywhere in India can log in and check eligibility for scholarships.
Then there is the new business process outsourcing (BPO) policy, elaborated Prasad. The plan is to have 48,000 BPO seats in smaller towns and cities — about 8,000 in Uttar Pradesh and 4,000 in Bihar. “We want to have BPOs in cities like Bhagalpur, Jharia, Jaisalmer and many such smaller towns,” Prasad said. Digital India will also focus on electronic manufacturing, apart from a massive connectivity drive connecting 2.5 lakh gram panchayats. Prasad said 10 states have already confirmed to be a part of the special purpose vehicle that will speedily implement the mass scale connectivity. State-owned telecom operator BSNL has agreed to upgrade 400 exchanges with next-generation-networks.
Prasad, however, agrees that this will not be possible without a mass rural implementation. The postal department of India has been roped in for that — 1,25,000 post offices in rural and semi-urban India will front to offer these services. “It will start with a three state pilot project, before we do a nationwide implementation,” said Prasad.
Payment bank licence likely to Post Dept in Aug
Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Saturday said he expects RBI to grant payment licence to the proposed Post Bank of India by August. This will enable the network of 1,54,000 post offices (including 1,30,000 rural post offices) to offer banking services to the masses in the country. “We expect RBI to give payment bank licence to post (department) in August,” Prasad said.
‘Net neutrality report soon’
Prasad said the government will soon come out with its report on the controversial issue of net neutrality and the telecom department is waiting for the report from sectoral regulator Trai. “Report of net neutrality will be out very soon but we are waiting for Trai report on the issue,” he said.
For Updates Check Economy News; follow us on Facebook and Twitter