12 September 2023

Several policy initiatives have been announced by India’s electronics and information technology minister Ashwini Vaishnaw focusing on improving the reach of IT and the issues of SIM card security and bulk connections.

The announcement concerns cabinet approval for the extension of the Digital India scheme for a period of five years till 2025-26. This involves an outlay of some 149 billion rupees.

The expanded scheme will help to re-skill and upskill 625,000 IT professionals and train about 265,000 people in information security. In addition, Bhashini, an artificial intelligence-enabled multi-language translation tool currently available in ten Indian languages, will be expanded to 22 languages. More supercomputers and more support for start-ups are also planned.