The move is aimed at making digital even remotest of villages and towns across the nation to ensure people there have access to the Internet for their consumption.
In what can be termed a big boost to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Digital India aim, the government is all set to extend internet services to six lakh villages in the next three years, reducing the digital divide between big cities and smaller and far off villages, top insiders in the central government told Times Now on Wednesday.
The move is aimed at making digital even remotest of villages and towns across the nation to ensure people there have access to the Internet for their consumption. Digitisation of villages will help people in the field of education, banking, telemedicine and ensure they become a digitally-inclusive society.
The Common Services Centres (CSC) and BharatNet, a program to connect Every panchayat in the country through the optical fibre, have teamed up to ensure the internet services reaches to as many villages in the next three years.
“With the announcement of extending BharatNet to more than six lakh villages by PM Modi in his Independence Day speech, the CSC will support in making all these villages digital by delivering various services to the citizen, promoting digital and financial inclusion and enhancing employment opportunities in rural India,” Dinesh Tyagi, the CEO of CSC e-Governance Services India Limited told Times Now.
“Presently we have 2.64 lakh CSC in villages. With BharatNet in every village we will have more than six lakh CSC in next 1,000 days,” he added.
According to ministry insiders, more than One lakh gram panchayats have been made functional over the past few months, with the work continuing even in during the successive lockdowns.
The CSC, meanwhile, has been ensuring last-mile internet connectivity drive in rural areas through its Wi-Fi Choupal program. Sources said over 50 million households are estimated to be benefitted with high-speed internet broadband by this move.
According to officials in the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, “there is a very high appetite of internet data in rural areas which in future can be pivotal in bridging the digital divide” and “if nurtured with the regular organic feed of educational and informative content, rural India can be digitally empowered and transformed”.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Prashant Kumar
Quelle/Source: ET Now News, 19.08.2020
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