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18:53, 30-Aug-2017
Innovation & Growth: Digital India initiative digitalizes Indian economy
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India's innovation growth rate would see a significant rise and could surpass that of China in the next decade, according to a BRICS report released on Tuesday.
And digitalization, as an important element of innovation competitiveness, is gaining increasing attention by Indian official. And Indian government hoped that growth would be facilitated by its flagship Digital India (DI) initiative.
That report was released ahead of the upcoming BRICS Summit, by China Science and Technology Exchange Center.
It is predicted that the overall national innovation competitiveness of BRICS countries would be constantly strengthened over time and the innovation competitiveness of India would see a significant rise in its growth rate probably surpassing China from 2025 to 2030.
VCG Photo
VCG Photo
The Digital India (DI) initiative objective was to create an empowered society and knowledge economy. Its highlights included providing high-speed Internet services to citizens, providing broadband services in all villages, implementing tele-medicine and mobile healthcare services, electronic education delivery and making governance more participative.
Indian IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad /CGTN Screen shoot
Indian IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad /CGTN Screen shoot
The Indian IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad described the DI initiative as “a transformative program”, adding that “Digital India is designed to make the ordinary Indian technologically empowered, for a better India for bridging the digital divide. And that has spawned many other programs from education to health to digital delivery of services.”
India's digital economy stands under 500 billion US dollars currently and the government estimates it will grow to over a trillion US dollars within the next seven years. It's committed over 1.4 billion US dollars through various off shoots of the Digital India program, also wooing technology companies to invest in digitizing India.
But for Digital India to truly empower India's growth, there are still obstacles that need to be overcome, while Internet speeds on both mobile networks and broadband are still poor.
“You need to enhance the broadband speed, you need to create the backbone infrastructure which spreads through the length and breadth of the country. The government has a plan to do all that but the progress is very slow. There also needs to be continuous electricity supply so that people remain connected,” said DK Joshi, chief economist at India credit research and information systems co. LTD.
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