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Digital India to transform the way India will live, work: Modi
San Jose (California), Sep 27 Prime Minister
Narendra Modi told US tech greats that his government's vision of
Digital India was an enterprise to transform India on a scale "perhaps,
unmatched in human history" that would touch the lives of those living
in the farthest corners of the country and also change the way the
nation "will live and work".
In his speech at the Digital India
dinner here, Modi recounted the way technology was helping make
connectivity easier, with the internet, mobile phone and Skype touching
the lives not only of farmers, villagers and those living in cities but
also connecting doctors in India with hospitals in other countries.
"Today,
technology is advancing citizen empowerment and democracy that once
drew their strength from Constitutions. Technology is forcing
governments to deal with massive volume of data and generate responses,
not in 24 hours but in 24 minutes," he said.
He said with Digital
India, the government will "transform governance, making it more
transparent, accountable, accessible and participative."
"I spoke
of e-Governance as a foundation of better governance - efficient,
economical and effective. I now speak of m-governance or mobile
governance. That is the way to go in a country with one billion cell
phones and use of smart phones growing at high double digit rates."
Modi
said: "Since my government came to office, we attacked poverty by using
power of networks and mobile phones to launch a new era of
empowerment."
"I see technology as a means to empower and as a
tool that bridges the distance between hope and opportunity," he said.
"In this digital age, we have an opportunity to transform lives of
people in ways that was hard to imagine just a couple of decades ago."
Modi
said the government wants paperless transactions and announced plans to
set up a "digital locker for every citizen to store personal documents
that can be shared across departments".
He said the e-biz portal set-up is aimed to make approvals for businesses and citizens easy and efficient.
The
government, he said, is using technology to impart scale and speed to
development and for this there is need to bridge the digital divide and
promote digital literacy in the same way as ensuring general literacy.
Modi
said: "We want our 1.25 billion citizens to be digitally connected. We
already have broadband usage across India go up by 63 percent last year.
We need to accelerate this further."
He said the government has
launched an aggressive expansion of the National Optical Fibre Network
that will take broadband to 600,000 villages. All schools and colleges
would be connected with broadband. "Building I-ways are as important as
highways," he said.
The government is expanding public Wi-Fi
hotspots and will ensure that free Wi-Fi is available not only in
airport lounges, but also on railway platforms. He announced that Google
will provide Wi-Fi at 500 railway stations in a short time.
He
also announced the setting up of Common Service Centres in villages and
towns and that information technology would be used to build smart
cities.
Modi said the government wants to turn villages into
smart economic hubs and connect farmers better to markets and make them
less vulnerable to the whims of weather.
"Access also means that
content should be in local languages. In a country with 22 official
languages, it is a formidable, but an important task," he said.
"Affordability
of products and services is critical for our success. There are many
dimensions to this. We will promote manufacture of quality and
affordable products in India. That is part of our vision of Make in
India, Digital India and Design in India," he added.
He said
along with promoting connecting the different services, the government
will also give the highest importance to data privacy and security,
intellectual property rights and cyber security.
Inviting the
tech giants, including Google, Microsoft, Adobe and others to
participate, Modi said: "So, from creating infrastructure to services,
from manufacture of products to human resource development, from support
governments to enabling citizens and promoting digital literacy,
Digital India is a vast cyber world of opportunities for you."
"Today,
we speak of India-US partnership as a defining partnership of this
century. It hinges on two major reasons. Both converge here in
California."
"We all know that the dynamic Asia Pacific Region
will shape the course of this century. And, India and the United States,
the world's two largest democracies, are located at the two ends of
this region."
"We have the responsibility to shape a future of peace, stability and prosperity in this region," Modi said.