'Technology will be a game changer for our country'

Shri P. P. Choudhury, Minister of State of Law, Justice and Electronics & IT, Government of India

“As far as the Digital India mission of the PM of India is concerned, it is based on largely 3 pillars – infrastructure, e-governance & service on demand and digital empowerment. In our country we are in the path of robust infrastructure for achieving the vision of digital India with respect to financial inclusion. We have 110 crores mobile phones and 114 crores Aadhaar numbers of citizens. So far as the connectivity part is concerned, the internet connectivity is around 47 crores. Digital payment is one of the sectors which is increasing day by day. But it needs awareness programs because in rural India where huge infrastructure is required to be laid down. We have today already connected 90,000 Gram Panchayats through optical fibre cables and the remaining is targeted to be completed by December 2018. And once this is over, the next step will be to connect these Gram Panchayats with high-speed broadband connections. Apart from this infrastructure, we will be having common service centres in every Gram Panchayats that will cover 5000 population. We expect these centres to provide digital literacy or awareness programs. If we succeed in doing this, technology for our country will be a game changer.”

The Minister was speaking at the 15th VARINDIA INFOTECH FORUM held in New Delhi on 25th May. The VARINDIA INFOTECH FORUM entered its 15th year by bringing together the who’s who of the ICT industry, IT consultants and senior government officials and PSUs and setting up a platform for a day-long event consisting of power-packed sessions of technical presentations, panel discussions and discourses on issues impacting the technology landscape and, most importantly, business networking. The theme of the 15th INFOTECH FORUM was – “Digitization and Role of IoT for Next-Generation Enterprise”.