New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday launched the “Digital India Week” as part of the larger initiative to empower the people and extend services better with the use of information technology and its tools.
The prime minister also unveiled a logo for Digital India, an umbrella programme that seeks to transform India into a digitally-empowered, knowledge economy with a host of initiatives for a synchronised and coordinated engagement of the government and its agencies.
For this scheme, the prime minister has already been named chairman of a high-powered monitoring committee and all existing and ongoing e-governance initiatives will be revamped to align them with the larger principles of “Digital India”, according to an official statement.
The larger goal of Digital India includes broadband connectivity in all panchayats, Wi-Fi in all the schools and universities and public Wi-Fi hotspots in all important cities by 2019. It will be deployed in delivering services in areas like health, education, agriculture and banking.
The vision is centred on three key areas:
— Digital infrastructure as a utility to every citizen
— Governance and service on Demand
— Digital empowerment of Citizens
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Wednesday said ‘Digital India’ was aimed to “change our lives” and the way India governs itself.
“Our financial inclusion programme is the largest in the world. In less than five months, we have opened 160 million ‘Jan Dhan’ accounts. The direct benefit transfer scheme has been extended to 130 million people in a few months,” Jaitley said here at the launch of Digital India programme by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
