Digital technology has helped us deal with COVID, connect, comfort and console us: PM Modi
Prime Minister Narendra Modi said innovation helps where conventions fail, as he said during the COVID pandemic, digital technology helped people cope, connect, relax and console. Addressing the 5th edition of VivaTech, one of Europe’s largest digital and start-up events held in Paris every year since 2016, he said, India’s universal and unique bio-metric digital identification system – Aadhaar has helped the poor. Helped in providing timely financial assistance.
We can supply free food to 80 crore people, and subsidize cooking fuel to many households, Modi said. We, in India, have been able to conduct two public digital education programs – SWAYAM and DIKSHA – in quick time to help students.
The Prime Minister also praised the role of the start-up sector in meeting the challenge of the pandemic and how indigenous IT platform, Aarogya Setu, enabled contact tracing and the CoWin digital platform has already helped millions of people in ensuring vaccines.
Modi said, India is one of the largest start-up ecosystems in the world. Several unicorns have appeared in recent years. India offers the pillars of talent, markets, capital, ecosystem and a culture of openness innovators and investors need.
The Prime Minister also emphasized on strengths like India’s talent pool, mobile phone penetration, 775 million internet users, highest and cheapest data consumption in the world. and maximum use of social media to invite investors in India.
He also enumerated initiatives such as state-of-the-art public digital infrastructure, 523,000 km of fiber-optic network connecting 156,000 village councils and public Wi-Fi networks across the country.
Referring to the disruptions faced by different sectors in the last one year, the Prime Minister stressed that disruption does not mean despair, but the dual foundation of repair and preparedness.
He said, this time last year, the world was still demanding a vaccine. Today, we have a lot. Similarly, we have to continue to repair health infrastructure and our economies. We have implemented major reforms in India in all sectors, be it mining, space, banking, nuclear power and much more. This shows that India as a nation is adaptable and agile, even in the midst of a pandemic.
The Prime Minister also emphasized the need to save our planet against the next pandemic, and called upon the start-up community to work with a collective spirit and a human-centric approach to address this challenge.
