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India Gazette
an hour ago
- Business
- India Gazette
PM Narendra Modi lauds India's technological, digital progress in past 11 years
New Delhi [India], June 12 (ANI): Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday hailed India's digital and technological progress stating that the country is making remarkable progress in innovation and application of technology. The Prime Minister highlighted that that the digital progress is also strengthening country's efforts towards becoming self reliant in the technology sector. Taking to his X social media platform PM Modi shared a post by MyGovIndia, which talks about how India could become the next technology powerhouse of the world and the steps taken by the Union Government in the past 11 years in the sector. 'Powered by the youth of India, we are making remarkable progress in innovation and application of technology. It is also strengthening our efforts to become self-reliant and a global tech powerhouse', PM Modi said. India has recorded a surge of 2500 times in the volume of UPI transaction with data showing that UPI transaction which was at 0.93 crore in April 2017 increased to 1867.70 crore until April 2025. India is also leading the digital payment revolution wherein more than Rs 260 lakh crore transactions have been processed with Rs 18,600 crore transactions annually. UPI's acceptance in the world has also increased and it is live in seven countries including UAE, Singapore, Nepal, France, Mauritius, Bhutan and Sri Lanka. India also stands as world's cheapest mobile data providers with more than 94 crore broadband connections and more than 120 crore telephone subscribers. A total of 2.18 lakh gram panchayats have been connected through optical fiber network under the Bharat Net scheme and 6.92 lakh km of fiber cable has been laid. The Union Government has also showcased interest in Artificial Intelligence with three AI Centres of Excellence to be setup in top educational institutions. India is also working over the development of AI models such as BharatGen, Sarvam-1, Chitralekha and Hanooman's Everest 1.0. On june 10, Prime Minister Modi shared an article on the government's commitment in advancing India's digital connectivity over the past 11 years. Sharing an article by Union Minister Jyotiraditya M Scindia, PM Modi said, 'Our government has been constantly striving to provide world-class facilities in digital connectivity to the country. In his article, Union Minister Jyotiraditya M Scindia has explained in detail how the success achieved in this in the last 11 years is inspiring us to move forward even faster in this direction.' In his article, Scindia elaborated on how villages have started telling the story of digital revolution. Scindia said on X, 'In the last 11 years, the historic decisions taken in the telecom sector and the Postal Department, under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modiji, have given rise to a digital revolution, connecting not only cities, but also villages, forests and borders.' (ANI)
The Hindu
4 hours ago
- Business
- The Hindu
PM Modi lauds India's technological, digital progress in past 11 years
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday (June 12, 2025) hailed India's digital and technological progress stating that the country is making remarkable progress in innovation and application of technology. The Prime Minister highlighted that that the digital progress is also strengthening country's efforts towards becoming self reliant in the technology sector. Taking to his X social media platform PM Modi shared a post by MyGovIndia, which talks about how India could become the next technology powerhouse of the world and the steps taken by the Union Government in the past 11 years in the sector. Leveraging the power of technology has brought innumerable benefits for people. Service delivery and transparency have been greatly boosted. Furthermore, technology has become a means of empowering the lives of the poorest of poor. #11YearsOfDigitalIndiahttps:// — Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) June 12, 2025 "Powered by the youth of India, we are making remarkable progress in innovation and application of technology. It is also strengthening our efforts to become self-reliant and a global tech powerhouse", PM Modi said. India has recorded a surge of 2500 times in the volume of UPI transaction with data showing that UPI transaction which was at 0.93 crore in April 2017 increased to 1867.70 crore until April is also leading the digital payment revolution wherein more than Rs 260 lakh crore transactions have been processed with Rs 18,600 crore transactions annually. UPI's acceptance in the world has also increased and it is live in seven countries including UAE, Singapore, Nepal, France, Mauritius, Bhutan and Sri Lanka. India also stands as world's cheapest mobile data providers with more than 94 crore broadband connections and more than 120 crore telephone subscribers. A total of 2.18 lakh gram panchayats have been connected through optical fiber network under the Bharat Net scheme and 6.92 lakh km of fiber cable has been laid.T The Union Government has also showcased interest in Artificial Intelligence with three AI Centres of Excellence to be setup in top educational institutions. India is also working over the development of AI models such as BharatGen, Sarvam-1, Chitralekha and Hanooman's Everest 1.0. On june 10, Prime Minister Modi shared an article on the government's commitment in advancing India's digital connectivity over the past 11 years. PM shares an article by Union Minister Scindia Sharing an article by Union Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia, PM Modi said, "Our government has been constantly striving to provide world-class facilities in digital connectivity to the country. In his article, Union Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia has explained in detail how the success achieved in this in the last 11 years is inspiring us to move forward even faster in this direction. "In his article, Mr. Scindia elaborated on how villages have started telling the story of digital said on X, "In the last 11 years, the historic decisions taken in the telecom sector and the Postal Department, under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modiji, have given rise to a digital revolution, connecting not only cities, but also villages, forests and borders."
Indian Express
26-04-2025
- Business
- Indian Express
Opinion We can't just be users of AI. We have to be its co-creators
Also by Pramath Raj Sinha The world is watching India. We are home to 16 per cent of the world's AI talent, with the fastest-growing developer population globally. Our AI skill penetration ranks ahead of the US and Germany. Homegrown models such as Sarvam-1 and Hanooman are making headlines. The IndiaAI Mission promises a vast expansion of infrastructure, research, and access. But amid all this promise, we must ask: AI for whom? For many Indians — shopkeepers in Cuttack, farm workers in Vidarbha, nurses in Dharwad, gig workers in Gorakhpur — AI remains distant, and at times, unusable. Earlier this year, one of us met Shabnam, a community health worker from Mumbai. Curious about AI, she tried using a chatbot to help her translate elaborate medical explanations to simple, everyday language that she could use to educate her patients. But the bot failed to understand her dialect. Her queries returned gibberish. Frustrated, she moved on. The failure wasn't hers. It was ours. A tool that promises simplicity offered her complexity. India's AI journey is bifurcating. In one India, generative AI is a productivity multiplier. In another, it's unintelligible noise. We must not mistake availability for access. Building models and pushing tools into the public domain is not the same as building capacity. For AI to become meaningful across India's social fabric, we need a radical shift in our imagination of AI literacy – not as a technical curriculum, not as a skilling programme, but as a democratic right. What does it mean for a vegetable vendor in Surat to know whether the 'AI-based' pricing app he downloaded is making fair suggestions? Or for a woman leading a self-help group in Jharkhand to understand how AI might shape her creditworthiness? This is not about teaching machine learning. It's about building critical agency so that citizens can question, interpret, and make informed decisions when AI touches their lives. Right now, most can't. The apps don't speak their language. The interfaces assume digital fluency. The data powering recommendations is blind to the local context. These tools, promising empowerment, often reinforce exclusion. Fixing this isn't about translating apps into more languages. It's about redefining development models — from top-down deployment to bottom-up co-creation. Effective AI literacy must be situated — rooted in context, community, and everyday needs. That means building hyper-local AI tools through participatory design. It means training 'AI ambassadors' in constituencies who can act as bridges between communities and technology. It means creating feedback loops where users shape how systems evolve. We have seen this model work before. India's digital financial revolution succeeded not because of an app, but because of the hosts of facilitators — bank sakhis, BC agents, WhatsApp groups — that made new tools intelligible, trustworthy, and usable. Why should AI be different? Meaningful initiatives are already underway. Sarvam-1 supports 11 Indian languages. Hanooman supports 12. Microsoft has committed to training 10 million Indians in cloud and AI skills by 2030. And language learning is just the beginning. We need to capture local customs, accents, workflows, and knowledge systems by investing in datasets that reflect India's pluralism — not only scraping pages on the internet, but also collaborating with rural and urban teachers, community leaders, non-profit volunteers, municipal staff, corporate professionals and many other stakeholders from across the spectrum to co-create content that AI can learn from. Let us be clear: There is no such thing as a neutral algorithm. And there is no such thing as an inclusive AI system without inclusive design, inclusive data, and inclusive dissemination. The AI literacy we need is not about knowing how ChatGPT works. It is about knowing when it does not. It is about helping citizens ask: Who built this? For whom? On what data? With what consequences? We cannot afford to wait for that flawless model. What we need is a movement, grounded in community, guided by trust, and fuelled by feedback. If India gets this right, we won't just be users of AI. We'll be its co-creators.
