Minister for Electronics and IT, Law and Justice, Ravi Shankar Prasad urged the startups to adopt digital villages in the coming year. While sharing his work on the optical fibre expansion he highlighted that the National Optical Fibre Network program was started in 2011. This program was designed to link 2, 50,000 gram panchayats with an optical fibre network.
He said, “When our government came to power in May 2014, only 358 km of optical fibres had been laid. In the last three years, we laid 2, 10,000 km and linked 1, 00,000 gram panchayats with it.”
The government is expecting to link the rest of the villages by mid-2018. The government is also planning to launch 10, 00 smart villages by the end of this year. All these villages will have virtual class room and virtual health room with solar power playing key role.
The minister requested the startups to come forward with new ideas and pick up some villages where the optical fibre is present and power it with digital education and digital health.
He was sharing his thoughts at a startup awards function in Bangalore.
By EB Bureau
