The Narendra Modi led BJP Government is planning to spend nearly Rs 70,000 crore to develop IT and telecom projects to achieve its Digital India mission.
The government has identified broadband and mobile networks as key growth pillars to achieve its targets under the Digital India program, PTI reported.
The government has taken three important steps in this direction. First, it identified two areas of growth: broadband and mobile in untapped areas.
Second, the telecom ministry wants to spend more funds. It started allocating more finance for the initiative.
Third, the government is trying to achieve its targets in advance.
The NDA government, which will be completing three months this month, has enhanced expenditure on broadband network to connect all 2.5 lakh village panchayats to Rs 32,000 crore against Rs 20,000 crore approved by the UPA government led by Congress party.
The BJP government is also trying to advance deadline to finish roll out of national optical fibre network (NOFN) by a quarter to December 2016 from earlier announced date of March 2017.
Recently, TRAI chairman Rahul Khullar criticized the delay in executing NOFN project, saying private sector companies should be part of such large projects.
India government has earmarked Rs 16,000 crore to provide mobile connectivity to approximately 42,300 villages that still don’t have any network coverage. The deadline to offer mobile connectivity in these unconnected villages is by 2018.
The BJP government has decided to create national information infrastructure at a cost of Rs 15,686 crore. The project will include integration of existing programme like the National Knowledge Network and NOFN.
Under the National Rural Internet Mission, government has earmarked fund of Rs 4,750 crore to make roll out Common Service Centres (CSCs) across 2.5 lakh villages.
Through CSCs people in rural area get access to government services like birth certificate, train tickets, pay various fees etc without actually having to visit concerned office. The CSCs are present at about 1.3 lakh locations.
Besides this, the Union government has earmarked Rs 200 crore to train 1 crore students in small towns and villages for IT sector jobs over period of next 5 years.
UPA government had started National Knowledge Network to connect 1,500 universities with high speed broadband network.
The NDA government has decided to provide wifi at all universities in the country with estimated cost of Rs 790 crore by end of next year.
Under Digital India programme, government has decided to spend Rs 98 crore on secure email, which will now be primary mode of communications, for official communications.
At present 10 lakh government employees have been moved to secure email communication and by March 2015 around 50 lakh employees will be moved on to the new system.
The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved the digital India programme that deal with all projects involving IT and communication technology like e-governance and broadband connectivity. The initial cost of the project, to be implemented over the next five years, is estimated at Rs 1,13,000 crore.
The Digital India programme has various other provisions which include wifi hotspots at public places, ebooks for schools, national portal for lost and found children, biometric attendance at government offices for which funds are yet to be finalized.
editor@telecomlead.com
