NEW DELHI: Union Minister for Communication and Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad on Thursday said the Digital India' is a transformational programme which has been launched in a mission mode to bridge the digital divide between haves and the have nots.
Addressing at the India Economic Convention 2015, organised by India Foundation and International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), Prasad said that Digital India is politics neutral even as he highlighted the government’s achievements in strengthening Digital India to “empower India as well as Indians”.
The minister, in his address during the panel discussion entitled: ‘Is India’s Digital Revolution a panacea to its infrastructure challenges’, said that the government through its Bharat Net initiative is creating a digital architecture for delivery of services to common man. Nearly 9,000 km of work under the programme has been completed in the past 14 months, he said.
He cited the example of a recently launched programme ‘Digital Pramanam’ to highlight how digitisation has been helping thousands of pensioners by eliminating the requirement for them to get physically verified that they are alive in order to claim their pension.
Prasad said that people in India are waiting for Digital India to become a success as the “initiative gives them a voice”.
He also said that electronic manufacturing in India has immense potential. “We have approved 20 electronic clusters and now the state governments are competing to get more approved,” he said.
The minister informed that Rs. 1,04,000 crore worth of electronic manufacturing proposals are under consideration of the government.