India needs to breach the divide to become a digital economy: President Droupadi Murmu

President Murmu said the country had pioneered the innovation of digital products that promoted inclusion with the objective of providing the citizens affordable access to digital services.

“Data is the cornerstone of creating new knowledge, insights and thus solutions. It leads to whole new fields of application. We should focus on democratising the use of government data so young technology enthusiasts can use it to build local digital solutions,” the President said.

Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw also attended the event.

Speaking at the event, Vaishnaw said in 2023, a big focus of the government would be ensuring the availability of credit to all.

He said the Digital India vision had ten dimensions, including aspects such as public-private partnership, country-wide telecom connectivity, fiber connectivity, and financial inclusion, among others.

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“The first dimension is creating such an ecosystem which harnesses public-private partnership. The government will create platforms and startups, enterprises, and banks can all join it to create solutions,” Vaishnaw said.
In the years to come, the government will also focus on getting more startups working out of tier-II and tier-III towns as well as bringing a technology-agnostic legal framework, he said.

The Indian government
released the latest draft of the Data Bill in November last year, opening it for public consultation.

“The Digital Personal Data Protection Bill is a legislation that frames out the rights and duties of the citizen (Digital Nagrik) on one hand and the obligations to use collected data lawfully of the Data Fiduciary on the other hand,” the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology said in an explanatory note put out with the draft of the data bill.

The comments and submissions by stakeholders on the data protection bill, however, will not be disclosed in public “to enable persons submitting feedback to provide the same freely”.