NEW DELHI, December 19, 2018 : Ravi Shankar Prasad, Minister of Law and Justice, Electronics and Information Technology, said here that the ‘Digital India’ programme was politics-neutral, centre-state-neutral and ideology-neutral. This had resulted in large-scale adoption of digital technology as the country marches towards becoming a trillion dollar digital economy in the next two to three years.
Addressing the 91st Annual General Meeting of FICCI, Prasad said that the ‘Digital India’ was transformative, designed to empower the citizens, bring about digital inclusiveness and bridge the rural-urban divide. The reliance was on low-cost technology as evidenced by the spread of digital identity through ‘Aadhar’ which supplements the physical identity of the people.
He said that the ‘New India’ envisioned by the present government marks a tectonic shift in thinking. “It is an inspiration to think big. Unless you think big, you can’t achieve modest success”, he said, adding that the increase in the number of mobile phones, smart phones, component manufacturing factories and optical fibre network were some examples of the adoption of digital technology in the country.
This was being achieved by the same people and the same process, Mr Prasad said and only proves the point that if you are able to connect the big picture, the people will respond. Prasad said the fundamental philosophy behind the success of the digital transformation was IT+IT=IT (India Talent+ Information Technology= India Tomorrow). He said India missed the industrial revolution due to historical reasons; it missed the entrepreneurial revolution owing to the licence-permit quota raj. We don’t want to miss the digital revolution which is designed to transform India’, he said.
