Government to create 1 lakh digital villages in 5 years: Piyush Goyal
Taking forward government’s Digital India programme, finance minister Piyush Goyal broached the concept of Digital Villages. The Government of India announced the Digital Villages initiative, during the Budget 2019.
Presenting the concept in the interim Budget, the finance minister said that the government has set an aim of building one lakh digital villages in the next 5 years. Goyal went on to say that the Jan Dhan Yojna, the Aadhaar scheme and the penetration of mobile phones have become “game changers”.
This follows the Digital Village or Digi Gaon Yojna announced last year, which has set a target of covering 700 villages in India by the end of 2018. It was designed to connect villages with Wi-Fi access and also assist residents with entrepreneurship opportunities such as setting up cottage industries.
The Finance Minister also said that, the Goods and service tax collection has crossed Rs 1 lakh crore in January 2019 while Direct tax collections have been increased from Rs 6.38 lakh crore to almost Rs 12 lakh crore.
Goyal went on to say in the Budget 2019 speech that India is leading the consumption of voice calls and mobile data using our mobile phones, which he specified is an increase of over 50 times in the past five years. India has the lowest mobile and data tariffs in the world.
In the Budget 2019 speech, finance minister Piyush Goyal also announced that the Make in India initiative has succeeded in the past few years. He says that now 268 companies are manufacturing mobile phones in India now, as compared with 2 companies earlier.