Centre wants to create IT hubs in smaller towns

Ravi Shankar Prasad

The government wants to create new hubs for information technology (IT) services, particularly in smaller towns, Minister for Communications and IT Ravi Shankar Prasad said here on Friday.

BPOs

“I want BPOs (business process outsourcing) to be opened up in smaller towns. I have asked my officers to come up with an incentive-driven scheme so that BPOs can be opened in places like Deoria, Gorakhpur, Balia, Seetamarhi, Samastipur, Tiruchi in Tamil Nadu and Ahmednagar in Maharashtra,” the Minister said while speaking at the ‘Digital India Conclave 2014’, organised by Chase India.

Stating that the power of technology could be a great leveller, he said to grow India must fill the gap between the rural and urban areas.

The government would lay about seven lakh kilometres of optical fibre network to connect all village panchayats by high speed broadband services by 2016, he said.

The government has set a target to roll out OFC network for high speed broadband services across 50,000 village panchayats by the end of this financial year, one lakh by March next and another one lakh by the end of 2016.

Further, he added that the government was also working on building a portal for ‘lost and found’ children, which should be up soon.