Rs.18,000 Crore Investmne Proposals For Digital India Programme

Ravi Shankar Prasad, Union Minister for Communication and Information Technology, recently said that Rs. 18,000 crore worth investment pro-posals have been received till now for the Digital India Programme, of which Rs. 4000 crore have been approved and more are in the pipeline. Speaking at the session on ‘The role of ICT and ‘Digital India’ initiative in India’s growth’ at the 87th AGM of FICCI, Prasad said while there are issues of spectrum to provide high speed con-nectivity and regulatory control, India will become an exciting place as far as Digital India is concerned. E-commerce, he said, was worth billions of dollars and will help increase India’s GDP in a big way. Prasad said that the huge postal network can be used for various services like banking, insurance etc. The postal services earn Rs. 280 crore from e-commerce, he said, and urged the private sector to take the initiative to develop India digitally. Stating that digital connectivity is needed for good governance, Prasad said India had more than USD 100 billion turnover in IT industry. All fortune companies con-nect with India’s IT. India has the potential of becoming no. 2 after China and surpass the United States. Spelling out the initiatives that have already been taken under the Digital India Programme, the Minister said mygov.in portal has been launched to allow India to interact on various govern-ment programmes. Suggestions received on various programmes like Clean Ganga, Swachh Bharat through the portal and designing, logo, slogan etc have been prepared. Under the Jan Dhan yojna – name for the programme was coined with the help of sugges-tions received through the portal, 8 crore bank accounts have been opened till now with a total deposit amount of Rs. 8000 crore. This is an ideal example of financial inclusion through digital technology.