PM Modi: This decade will be “India’s Techade”

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday said that the government’s flagship Digital India mission, coupled with enormous opportunities available to the country in terms of data and demographic dividend, could make the next decade one of technological growth.

Modi was speaking at an event to make the sixth anniversary of the Digital India programme’s launch in July, 2015. One of the marquee programme’s for the first as well as the second term of the government, Digital India is a set of initiatives meant to encourage the uptake of services and commerce over the internet.

On Thursday, Modi said gain from such initiatives will further emerge as India bridges the gap between services and people’s access to them. “This presents a massive opportunity for India, together we will be successful in making this decade India’s techade,” Modi said.

“The digital India mission has enabled the implementation of the one nation, on ration card and helped ease access to services for millions of people during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday directed all states and Union territories to implement the ‘One Ration Card’ scheme by July 31. The singular ration card system has been looked at as a crucial technology driven solution at a time when rural migrants were stranded at their places of work due to the Covid-19 lockdown.

Interacting with the beneficiaries of Digital India schemes, Modi said direct benefit transfer helped send money to crores of people. “At a time when developed countries were unable to send aid to their citizens due to the lockdown, India was sending thousands of crores of rupees directly to the bank accounts of the people…”