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ET Digital UP Conclave: ‘Technology empowering governance, driving industrial growth in UP'

ET Digital UP Conclave: ‘Technology empowering governance, driving industrial growth in UP'

Time of India24-05-2025

Governance is empowered through digital technology, and the digital push in turn fuels industrial growth, experts said during a panel discussion on 'Digital Uttar Pradesh: Engine for Industrial Growth' during the ET Digital UP Conclave on Friday.
Mission director, National Health Mission, UP, and secretary, medical, health and family welfare department, Pinky Jowel said, "Many new things have been introduced in the health sector in last two years. For example, E Kavach is a comprehensive digital health application that has data on all health schemes. It incorporates a registry of every individual in the state."
"Every ASHA worker has smartphone and laptop.
Similar is the case with ANMs and community health officers. They capture all data related to health systems into E Kavach, which helps us analyse and form policies for future. So, this is a digital revolution that even our lowest field workers can record all immunisation, screening of diabetes and hypertension, and we are adding more health issues to it," she said.
"ABHA ID is another innovation incorporated along with E Kavach.
It is a kind of smart card with a QR code, and it has the digitised health ID of an individual," she added.
"The govt is working on technology-enabled governance, and to ensure this, we must take care of the basic needs of technology user. It should be error-free, transparent, and simple to use. The biggest example of technology-enabled governance is the booking of railway tickets. Earlier, it was tough to get a ticket in offline mode, but now, within seconds, a ticket is booked," said CEO, Uttar Pradesh State Industrial Development Authority (UPSIDA), Mayur Maheshwari.
"The power of technology is such that with meaningful interventions, we can make daily lives of common people easy. UPSIDA's digital platform was earlier used by around 800 users, but now around 11,000 people are using it monthly," he added.
"In UP, 98% of industries are MSMEs, and the number is huge. This sector has less automation and a huge number of employees. In industrial areas, all land approval, bank loans, and incentive disbursement are online," said secretary, MSME and Export Promotion and Infrastructure & Industrial Development Department, Pranjal Yadav.
He said the govt's focus was to make interactions online to make things easy for artisans and craftsmen.
"We have come up with an Alexa kind of device, with sticky films that capture pathogens. It hovers over farms and detects pathogens, which is otherwise a challenging task in agriculture sector," said national sales head, ABM Knowledgeware Ltd, Lokesh Sharma.
The session was moderated by managing director, Foundation for Innovation and Technology Transfer (FITT), Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, Nikhil Agarwal.
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