THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT DIGITAL INDIA
• Digital India is a massive tech push to provide electronic governance and universal phone connectivity across the country . The aim is to bridge India ' s digital divide , bringing in large investments in technology manufacturing .
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The PM described Digital India as a roadmap to change India ' s future . " Earlier , a child used to playfully wrench your reading glasses ", he said , " today , he reaches for your phone . We need to understand this change or the world will pass us by ."
" E-Governance is going to change into M-Governance ... M is not Modi Governance , it is mobile governance ," the PM said with a smile , sketching a broad roadmap in his 27-minute speech of how he plans to digitise India .
Reliance Industries Ltd plans to invest about 2.5 lakh crore ($ 39.3 billion ) in digital initiatives , Chairman Mukesh Ambani said , though he did not indicate a timeline . " Normally , industry moves faster than government ", he said ," but with Digital India , I have no hesitation in saying the government has moved faster ."
But the push to connect India and drive a national fibre optic network , approved by the previous Congress-led government in 2011 , has made slow progress in utilizing technology to bring services and deliverables to those outside large towns and cities . The Government of India has undertaken an initiative namely Bharat Net , a high speed digital highway to connect all 2.5 lakh Gram Panchayats of country . This would be the world ' s largest rural broadband connectivity project using optical fibre .
Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has said that during Digital India Week , the government expects " billions of dollars in investment ", critical for a government that needs to create more jobs quickly .
eSign framework would allow citizens to digitally sign a document online using Aadhaar authentication .
Digital Locker System aims to minimize the usage of physical documents and enable sharing of e- documents across agencies . The sharing of the e-documents will be done through registered repositories thereby ensuring the authenticity of the documents online , says the government .
Centre of Excellence on Internet on Things ( IoT ) is a joint initiative of Department of Electronics & Information Technology ( DeitY ), ERNET and NASSCOM . IoT development in India is sure to get pace now .
At the event today , Cyrus Mistry said the Tata Group would hire 60,000 IT professionals this year , and Kumaramangalam Birla said his Aditya Birla Group will invest Rs . 44,500 crore ($ 7 billion ) in the next five years in the infra and digital space . Supporting the Digital India initiative , world ' s largest software maker Microsoft Corp says it will help GOI in efforts to " transform " country