Zee Media Bureau
New Delhi: The 1 lakh crore Digital India programme that the BJP government approved last week aims at digitally empowered knowledge economy wherein every projects of the government will be available to the citizen electronically while the people will get the benefit of the latest information and communication technology.
The programme, to be implemented in phases from the current year till 2018, hopes to see that every citizen of the country is digitally connected to the government.
Hence, the government is planning to ensure that every Indian has a smartphone by the year 2019 which will be the main mechanism for delivery of government services.
According to a leading English daily, Communications and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has said that the Narendra Modi government wants to ensure that every citizen has a smartphone by the year 2019.
"We want to ensure that all the services can be provided through a mobile handset, especially, health, education, various government services and retail," the daily quoted the minister as saying.
"We want it (handset) to be used as a tool for empowerment. We will need to incentivise its usage in order to promote the social and the economic objectives of the government."
The minister will also meet IT ministers from the states on August 26 to discuss the road-map for implementing the Rs 1 lakh crore 'Digital India' programme.
According to reports, the meeting will be on issues like implementation and delivery of various eServices, National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN), electronic manufacturing and Common Service Centres (CSC) among others.
