The NDA government is on a mission to make India’s digital economy a trillion dollar economy in the coming five years with a potential to create 50 lakh to 75 lakh jobs, said Union Minister of Law and Justice and Electronics and IT, Ravi Shankar Prasad.
India is emerging as the big digital market with the highest footprints for Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter and a hub of startups. At the same time, Digital India is designed to empower the common man, and the government is creating digital delivery of services in healthcare, education, agriculture. Six crore people in rural India would be made digitally literate.
He was addressing mediapersons after NASSCOM (National Association of Software and Service Companies) signed an MoU with Ministry of Electronics and IT for re-skilling of two million technology professionals and skilling another two million potential employees and students over the next few years.
The Union Minister, who attended the inaugural session of the World Congress on IT 2018 and Nasscom ILF 2018 at the HICC here on Monday, said digital empowerment could happen only if there was digital inclusion. With the advent of new technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain and IoT, re-skilling of young professionals was critical.
He appreciated the NASSCOM for coming up with Futureskills platform earlier unveiled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi through a video conference.
The digital profile of India was limited to only a few cities like Delhi, Noida, Gurgaon, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune, etc., he said, but then NDA government had taken BPOs to small towns like Kohima, Imphal, Patna and Kanpur.
Allaying fears that digital technology would take away jobs, Mr. Prasad said new technology might displace 10 jobs, but would create 100 jobs. “Let me assure you that new technology would create more jobs as it happened when computers came into the scene decades ago,” he said.
Emphasising that Ddigital India should be based on technology that was low cost and domestic, the Union Minister reminded that Bhim App and Aadhaar were Indian products. When Bhim App was introduced in December 2016, 4,000 transactions used to happen per day after an year, it was now 50 lakh transactions per day and common people learnt it without need for major re-skilling exercise.
Data Protection Law soon
Replying to a question on the Data Protection Law, he said the government had set up a committee headed by Sri Krishna, former Supreme Court Judge, and they were having wider consultations with the stakeholders. Soon, they would come out with a report and the government would then go for legislation, said the Minister.
On data privacy concerns, he stated the Supreme Court observed that under the garb of privacy, data innovation could not be stopped. He also said privacy could not be the shield of the corrupt and terrorists.
