Digital India possible only if Digital UP happens, says Prasad

Team Udayavani, Feb 23, 2018, 5:47 PM IST

Lucknow: Digital India cannot be achieved without a Digital UP, IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said today while urging investors to invest confidently in India.

India has a huge potential in the field of IT, he said at the UP Investors Summit being held here. “You see, rapidly, India is getting digitalised. Out of 130 crore people, 121 crore people have mobile…40-45 crore have smart phone.”

Highlighting the importance of UP, Prasad said however that Digital India cannot be achieved without Digital UP.

“There is a digital revolution going on all over the globe, I don’t want India to lag behind where there are immense business opportunities,” he said.

If you talk about social networks, India has largest users of Facebook, twitter and WhatsApp, Prasad said.

He further said that by 2020, out of the total number of mobile phones world would be using, a major percentage of those would be produced in India.

“There were only 2 mobile manufacturing centres when we came to power, now there are 118. Nokia had also closed. Now there are 118 and 54 are in Noida,” he said.

Noida and Greater Noida have great potential and they can become next Singapore, he said.

The Union minister further said that there are immense opportunities in setting up BPOs and the government is ready to help.

He suggested BPOs can be set up in cities like Gorakhpur, Deoria among others as today everything from order to payment is just a click away.

Uttar Pradesh has a single window clearance system now, Prasad said, adding that “the CM himself will monitor all business proposals investing in UP will not be a tiring process any more… Besides, the Centre is always there to help the investors and assist the state government,” he said.

He also stated that when the present government took over the reins in mid-2014, optical fibre network was 358 km. “We laid 2 lakh 10 thousand. We opened Jandhan and linked it to Aadhaar, this save a huge amount of government money,” he added.