Tuesday, December 16, 2014: Ravi Shankar Prasad, union minister for communications and information technology, has promised both Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, three electronics clusters each. Prasad also mentioned the Electronics Development Fund, which has been set up by the union government, in order to promote innovation and clusters to boost electronics manufacturing in the country.
While addressing the audience at the golden jubilee programme of the Computer Society of India – CSI-2014, he said, “One cluster each for AP and Telangana has already been approved. One additional cluster each is in process and, today they demanded one more. I have promised both the CMs that I will give them one more cluster each. With this, both Andhra Pradesh and Telangana will have three electronics clusters each. We have to work as Team India and the geographical location of a state is not important.”
He further added, “The government will be promoting the clusters scheme, wherein the state government will get Rs 500 million if it gives 50 acres of land for a cluster. We are persuading big guns like Samsung and LG to come to India in a big way and contribute to ‘make in India’.” He noted that as part of the National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN), the Union government would lay optical fibre cable of almost 0.7 million km, within all major village panchayats of the country to set platforms for e-commerce, e-education and e-health in rural India.
The union government would also be creating infrastructural set up for digital delivery of services and also for digital literacy, under the ‘Digital India’ initiative. Prasad said, “As the white revolution took place in dairy sector through women’s cooperatives…can we power digital literacy through women cooperatives running common service centres in rural India?”
