NEW DELHI: Union communication and IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad informed Rajya Sabha that the government is working on laying out BharatNet in villages all over India and the Prime Minister wants this to be accomplished in the coming 1,000 days.
While citing efforts to bolster internet access and connectivity, Prasad also shared that IT sector in India has contributed 8% to the country’s GDP and two lakh new jobs have been added in the sector since 2019.
“A total of 46 lakh people work in it, which include 14 lakh women. After 2019, two lakh people have got jobs in the IT sector,” he said during question hour.
The plan for rural connectivity was shared in response to a supplementary question from NCP member Fauzia Khan who sought to know what the government was doing to strengthen access to online education in the remote rural areas. The minister said his focus was to keep the government schools in mind while providing digital education, so that students there are able to get the benefit of educational opportunities through the online mode.
Prasad said the success of online education has been confirmed in the last one year as school education was not interrupted even during the pandemic. He also informed the House that a total of 70 lakh cases have been heard digitally by the Supreme Court and the high court during the pandemic. Highlighting the new developments in the IT sector, he said, India has become the top most performing country in the world in UPI in making digital payments.
Responding to another supplementary question, Prasad said, “You will be happy to know that India has become the top country in the use of mobile applications. But we have to expand further and I’m quite sure in the coming years, Indian mobile app platforms on hosting of mobile apps will surely give a tough competition to the international platforms,” he said.
The minister said that the government has started allowing Mobile Seva App Store to also host apps free of cost. “In our mobile government app, all have come on board and its total download is 8.65 crore. Therefore, it is an improvement in the right direction,” he added.