Centre to announce data centre park policy

Terming data as the new oil, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Saturday said that a policy will be announced to enable private sector in building Data Centre Parks throughout the country.

"Technologies like AI, Internet-of-Things (IoT), 3D printing, drones, DNA data storage, quantum computing, etc., are re-writing the world economic order. India has already embraced new paradigms such as the sharing economy with aggregator platforms displacing conventional businesses," the Minister said in the budget speech.

This year government aims to link 100,000 gram panchayats with Fibre to the Home (FTTH) connections through Bharatnet. This will fulfill the vision of providing digital connectivity to all ‘public institutions’ like Anganwadis, health and wellness centres, government schools, etc. at Gram Panchayat level. It is proposed to provide Rs. 6000 crore to Bharatnet programme in 2020-21, the Minister said.

The government also plans to set up Knowledge Translation Clusters across different technology sectors including new and emerging areas.

Technology Clusters, with test beds and small scale manufacturing facilities for designing, fabrication and validation of proof of concept to be established.

The Minister also said two national-level science schemes are to be initiated to create a comprehensive database of mapping India’s genetic landscape, given its criticality for next generation medicine, agriculture and bio-diversity management.

With the quantum technology is opening up new frontiers in computing, communications, cyber security with wide-spread applications, the government proposed to provide an outlay of Rs. 8000 crore over a period of five years for the National Mission on Quantum Technologies and Applications.

Rs 8000 crore has been proposed to allocate for the National Mission for Quantum Technologies.