India invests $1.79 billion to expand digital ecosystem

Digital India is an umbrella program for India's digital governance initiatives. (Photo: nextr).

Introduced in 2015, Digital India is an umbrella program for several digital governance initiatives, including Bharat Broadband Network (BBN) for rural broadband connectivity, Common Service Centre (CSC) and Bharat Financial Interface (BHIM)… The focus areas are new skills training for citizens, cybersecurity, entrepreneurship and promoting the use of Indian languages.

According to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Digital India will stimulate the digital economy , improve access to services and strengthen the IT ecosystem. Over the past few years, the Indian government has announced several initiatives to promote a digital lifestyle.

As part of the expansion, the government will invest in reskilling and upgrading skills of 256,000 IT workers under the Future Skills program. India will also train 265,000 cybersecurity workers. There is a growing need for reskilling in areas like IT as the push for AI and automation could make many positions in other sectors redundant.

The funding will also be used to scale up the Bhashini program to 22 languages. Bhashini is an AI-based translation tool that currently supports 10 Indian languages. The goal of the program is to make internet and digital services accessible to all people in the country in their own language and enhance content in local languages.

In addition, part of the funding will fund 1,200 startups in tier-2 and tier-3 towns and cities. The government also launched an information security awareness program targeting 120 million people.

Another part will add nine supercomputers to the existing 18 machines to serve the National Supercomputer mission. Finally, the government will set up three research centers to apply artificial intelligence in medicine , health and sustainable living.

(According to Light Reading)