JOIN USIndia Inc's Rs 4.5-l crore boost for Digital India
India’s top industrialists on Wednesday committed investments to the tune of Rs 4.5 lakh crore towards the Digital India initiative kicked off by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who said he dreamt of an India where technology ensured the citizen-government interface was “incorruptible”.
Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries alone committed Rs 2.5 lakh crore, which is more than half of the total contribution made by close to a dozen industrialists. In all, they promised to generate employment to about 18 lakh Indians through the Digital India platform.
“We at Reliance will invest over Rs 250,000 crore across the Digital India pillars,” Ambani said.
Elaborating on the investment, he said infrastructure for all-IP next-generation, wireless broadband infrastructure across all the 29 states in India is being laid, Ambani said.
Launching the initiative, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Digital India aims to transform the country into a digitally-empowered knowledge economy, where high speed highways unite the nation of 1.2 billion people.
The vision of Digital India programme also aims at inclusive growth in areas of electronic services, products, manufacturing, and job opportunities.
Ambani promised to make the necessary investments and strongly partner with central and state governments in the area of eGovernance, digital education, digital healthcare, smart cities, and rural digital services.
Ambani said his Reliance Jio Infocomm, which will launch telephony and broadband services by December, will create employment for over five lakh people.
Rs 1 lakh cr from Bharti
Ambani’s whopping sum was followed by Bharti Enterprises Group Chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal, who said his company was committed to investing Rs 1 lakh crore in the Digital India Space in the next five years.
Aditya Birla Group’s chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla committed over Rs 42,000 crore in the next five years in the infrastructure and digital space.
Birla also promised investment in digital weather forecasting to help farmers better manage their crops. The Anil Ambani headed Reliance Group said it will invest Rs 10,000 crore across digital, telecom, and cloud space.
Calling for a Digital India where the world looked at India for the ‘next big idea’, the Prime Minister said, “India has about 25 crore internet users. But the people who are still not using internet are more than anywhere else.”
He said the government was committed to providing internet facility to each and every Indian residing in the remotest part of the country under the Digital India programme.
Modi said, “EGovernance is going to change to mGovernance soon.” He punned on it by saying ‘M’ is not for ‘Modi’', but ‘Mobile’.