Lok Sabha Question No. 4429 (UNSTARRED), answered on 2022-03-30
Subject: Data Centres and Digital India Programme
Ministry: ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
Asked by: Sudheer Gupta, Ravindra Kushawaha, Ravi Kishan Shukla, Subrata Pathak, Sambhajirao Mane Dhairyasheel, Manoj Kumar Tiwari, Shrirang Appa Barne, Bidyut Baran Mahato, Sanjay Sadashivrao Mandlik, Prataprao  Jadhav

## GOVERNMENT OF INDIA

## MINISTRY OF ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (MeitY)

## LOK SABHA UNSTARRED QUESTION NO. 4429

TO BE ANSWERED ON: 30.03.2022

## DATA CENTRE AND DIGITAL INDIA PROGRAMME

## 4429.  SHRI SUDHEER GUPTA:SHRI RAVINDRA KUSHWAHA:SHRI RAVI KISHAN:SHRI SUBRAT PATHAK:SHRI DHAIRYASHEEL SAMBHAJIRAO MANE: SHRI MANOJ TIWARI:SHRI SHRIRANG APPA BARNE: SHRI BIDYUT BARAN MAHATO:SHRI SANJAY SADASHIVRAO MANDLIK: SHRI PRATAPRAO JADHAV

Will the Minister of ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY be pleased to state:

- (a) whether the Government is considering to establish its Data Centre region to accelerate India's digital momentum and if so, the details thereof;
- (b) the details of likely benefits to be accrued by setting up of such a Data Centre in the country;
- (c) whether the Government has achieved its desired targets set under the Digital India Programme and if so, the details thereof;
- (d) whether the Government is also considering to devise a New National Data Centre Policy and if so, the details thereof along with the salient features of the said policy;
- (a) whether the Government has held any consultation with the stakeholders in this regard and if so, the details thereof along with the response of the stakeholders thereon; and
- (b) the details of the steps taken by the Government to make India a global Data Centre Hub?

## ANSWER

## MINISTER OF STATE FOR ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (SHRI RAJEEV CHANDRASEKHAR)

- (a):   No, Sir.
- (b):    Does not arise.
- (c):  The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Government of India launched the 'Digital  India'  programme  with  the  vision  to  transform  India  into  a  digitally  empowered  society  and knowledge-based  economy  by  ensuring  digital  access,  digital  inclusion,  digital  empowerment  and bridging the digital divide. In summary, our mission is to ensure that the digital technologies improve the life of every citizen, expand India's digital economy, create employment and global digital technological capabilities in the country. The status of some of the key initiatives undertaken by MeitY under Digital India programme across the country is at Annexure.
- (d): Yes, Sir.  Data Centres and Cloud are an important and integral component of the overall Digital India infrastructure ecosystem.
- (e): Yes, Sir. The Ministry conducts public consultations for all policies as a norm. A recent public consultation  at  Chennai, on  25th  February  2022,  was  attended  by  over  65 corporates and  Central/State government  officials  in  person  and  over  295  other  stakeholders  over  video  conferencing.  The  inputs received are being studied.
- (f): Government  has  its  clear  objective  that  India  emerges  as  a  Data  Centre  &  Cloud  hub  in  the country.

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## ANNEXURE

The  present  status  of  some  of  the  key  initiatives  undertaken  by  MeitY  under  Digital  India programme across the country is as follows:

-  Aadhaar :  Aadhaar  provides  12  digit  biometric  and  demographic  based  identity  that  is unique, lifelong, online and authenticable. Further to give statutory backing to Aadhaar 'The Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016' was notified on 26th March 2016. Over 132 + crore residents have been enrolled.
-  Common Services Centre (CSC): The Common Services Centres project aims to set-up at least one CSC at 2.50 lakh Gram Panchayats(GPs) across the country, for delivery of various Government  to  Citizen(G2C)  and  other  citizen  centric  e-Services.  It  is  a  self-sustainable entrepreneurship  model  which  is  run  by  Village  level  Entrepreneurs  (VLEs).  As  on  Feb, 2022, total 4.63 lakh CSCs are functional (Urban + Rural), out of which, 3.63 lakh CSCs are functional at GP level.
-  Digital  locker: Digital  Locker  provides  an  ecosystem  with  collection  of  repositories  and gateways for issuers to upload the documents in the digital repositories. So far, more than 9.23 crore registered user of DigiLocker. 486 crore authentic documents have been issued. 1695 Issuers and 349 Requestor organizations have been on-boarded.
-  Unified  Mobile  Application  for  New-Age  Governance  (UMANG) :  UMANG  has  been developed  as  a  single  mobile  platform  to  deliver  major  Government  services.  Currently, 1,417 Services from 279 Central/ State Government department/ agencies of 33 States along with 20,527 services of Bharat Bill Payment System (BBPS) Utility services have been onboarded on UMANG.
-  e-Sign : e-Sign service facilitates instant signing of forms/documents online by citizens in a legally acceptable form. The services are being leveraged by various applications using OTP based authentication services of UIDAI. Total e-sign issued are 23.72 Crore and over 4.45 Crore e-Sign issued by CDAC.
-  MyGov: MyGov  is a first-of-its-kind citizen engagement platform for participatory governance in India. MyGov aims to facilitate a dialogue between citizens and Government, bringing  citizens  closer  to  the  Government  and  bringing  the  Government  closer  to  the citizens  it  serves,  via  this  platform.  Presently,  over  2.25+  crore  users  are  registered  with MyGov, participating in various activities hosted on MyGov platform.
-  Digital Village : MeitY has also initiated the 'Digital Village Pilot Project' in October, 2018. 700 Gram Panchayats (GPs)/Village with atleast one Gram Panchayat/Village per District per  State/UT  are  being  covered  under  the  project.  The  digital  services  being  offered  are
- Digital  Health  Services,  Education  Service,  Financial  Services,  Skill  Development,  Solar panel powered street lights including Government to Citizens Services (G2C), Business to Citizen (B2C) Services.
-  National Rollout of eDistrict MMP : e-District is a Mission Mode Project (MMP) that aims at electronic delivery of identified high volume citizen centric services at the district or subdistrict level. Total 3,916 e-District services have been launched in 709 districts across 28 States/ 6 UTs.
-  Open  Govt.  Data  Platform :  Open  Government  Data  (OGD)  Platform  is  a  platform  for supporting Open Data initiative of Government of India. It intends to increase transparency in the functioning of Government and also open avenues for many more innovative usages of Government Data to give different perspective. Currently, OGD platform have 5,26,805 resources with 428 CDOs of 243 Departments, designed 12,064 catalogs, 2,599 visualization & developed 1,29,396 APIs.
-  eHospital/  Online  Registration  System  (ORS ):  e-Hospital  application  is  the  Hospital Management Information System for internal workflows and processes of hospitals. Online Registration System (ORS) as well as e-Hospital applications are hosted at NIC's National Cloud. Currently, 631 Hospitals have been on-boarded on e-Hospital with over 23.38 crore e-Hospital transactions, and ORS has been adopted by 422 hospitals across the country with over 49 lakh appointments booked from ORS.
-  JeevanPramaan: Digital Life Certificate for Pensioners scheme known as JeevanPramaan envisages to digitize the whole process of securing the life certificate. With this initiative, the  pensioner  is  no  more  required  to  physically  present  himself  or  herself  in  front  of disbursing agency or the certification authority.  Over 557.63 lakh Digital  Life  certificates have been processed since 2014.
-  NCOG-GIS Applications :  National  Centre  of  Geo-informatics  (NCoG)  project,  is  a  GIS platform developed for sharing, collaboration, location based analytics and decision support system for Departments. So far, 605 applications across various domains are operational.
-  National  Knowledge  Network: The  Objective  of the NKN  is  to  inter-connect all knowledge institutions across the country through high speed data communication network to encourage sharing of resources and collaborative research covering about 1500 institutions comprising of all universities, institution of high learning and research. A high speed data communication network has been established to interconnect Institution of higher learning, and research. As on 28 th February 2022 a total of 1756 links  have been provided under NKN to more than 1700  Institutions.
-  E- Infrastructure :  As part of digital India Initiative, MeitY has successfully implemented setting up Wi-Fi enabled campus network at five University viz: Allahabad University, Pune university, Osmania University ,Utkal University and North East Hill University (NEHU)
-  Pradhan  MantriGramin  Digital  SakshartaAbhiyaan (PMGDISHA):  The  Government has  approved  a  new  scheme  titled  'Pradhan  MantriGramin  Digital  SakshartaAbhiyan (PMGDISHA)'  to  usher  in  digital  literacy  in  rural  India  by  covering  6  Crore  rural households (one person per household). As on 24 th march 2022 a total of around 5.77 crore candidates and  4.87 crore have been trained out of which  3.60 crore candidates have been certified  under  the  PMGDISH Scheme. The scheme is applicable to  all rural areas of the

country.

-  Unified  Payment Interface  (UPI): UPI is  a  leading  digital  payment  platform.  It  powers multiple bank accounts into a single mobile application (of any participating bank), merging several banking features, seamless fund routing & merchant payments into one hood. It also caters  to  the  'Peer  to  Peer'  collect  request  which  can  be  scheduled  and  paid  as  per requirement and convenience. 229 Banks are providing UPI Services.
-  FutureSkills  Prime :  MeitY  in  collaboration  with  NASSCOM  has  initiated  a  programme titled  FutureSkills  PRIME.  The  programme  is  aimed  at  re-skilling/  up-skilling  of  IT professionals  in  10  new/emerging  technologies  which  include  Augmented/Virtual  Reality, Internet of Things, Big Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, Robotic Process Automation, Additive Manufacturing/ 3D Printing, Cloud Computing, Social & Mobile, Cyber Security and Blockchain.
-  Cyber  Security :  Matters  relating  to  Cyber  Laws,  administration  of  the  Information Technology Act. 2000 (21 of 2000) (IT Act, 2000) and other IT related laws" comes under the purview of MeitY. While administering the parent IT Act, 2000, MeitY has the specific responsibility to ensure-better internet governance, data protection, cyber security, privacy over the Internet, promotion and regulation of technology companies and promotion of egovernance.  India  has  made  it  to  the  top  10  in  Global  Cybersecurity  Index  (GCI)  2020 launched by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) on June 29, 2021, moving up 37 places to rank as the tenth best country in the world on key cybersafety parameters.
-  BPO Promotion Scheme : The India BPO Promotion Scheme (IBPS) and North East BPO Promotion  Scheme  (NEBPS)  were  initiated  under  Digital  India  Programme  to  create employment opportunities for the youth of the country by setting up BPO/ITES operation in smaller cities across the country and North Eastern Region. The BPO Promotion Schemes aimed at incentivising establishment of total 53,300 seats in respect for BPO/ITES operation across  the  country.  Overall,  61,208  seats  were  allocated  to  eligible  entities  to  setup BPO/ITES operation under these schemes.

##  Electronics Manufacturing

- o Modified  Special  Incentive  Package  (M-SIPS):  As  on  date,  308  applications  with proposed investment of approximately Rs. 83,958 crore have been approved.
- o Electronic  Manufacturing  Clusters  (EMC):  Under  EMC  scheme,  19  Greenfield  EMCs and 3 Common Facility Centres (CFCs) measuring an area of 3,464 acres with project cost of   Rs. 3,762 crore including Government Grant-in-aid of Rs. 1,538 crore have been approved  in  15  states  across  the  country.  Based  on  closure  of  receipt  of  applications under EMC scheme, MeitY notified Modified Electronics Manufacturing Clusters (EMC 2.0)  Scheme  on  1st  April,  2020  for  further  strengthening  the  infrastructure  base  for electronics industry in the country and deepening the electronics value chain. As of now, 2 applications for setting up of EMC over an area of 1,040 acres with project cost of Rs. 1,410  crore  including  Central  financial  assistance    ofRs.  681.04  crore  have  been approved.
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