“When we say today new India means new opportunities and new prosperity, it means that the next unicorns can be from Nagaland, Kohima, Dibrugarh, Jorhat or anywhere. It is all your capabilities. And in the centre is the promise of Digital India ka Digital North East,” said Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Minister of State for Electronics & IT, Entrepreneurship & Skill Development.
The minister inaugurated 5 centres of National Institute of Electronics and Information Technology (NIELIT) in the northeast for skill enhancement of the educated youth in the region.
These five NIELIT centres are located in Dibrugarh, Dimapur, Jorhat, Pasighat and Senapati.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said that the “future of India is technology and he has called the next 10 years as India’s Techade”. To make India’s Techade a reality, it will require the youth from Nagaland, Assam or any other region in the northeast to join this digital India revolution, he said.
Inaugurating the centres at a function held in Dimapur on Friday, the minister – on his third and concluding day of visit to the northeast, said it is “our PM Narendra Modi Ji’s conviction to bring northeast at par with other developed regions in the country”.
Remembering his earlier visit, the minister said there was only one entrepreneur in Software Technology Parks of India (STPI ), Kohima, about seven months ago when he visited. “Now, the STPI Kohima is packed with entrepreneurs. And that’s the symbol or the sign of the future of Nagaland and the future of the northeast,” he added.
“When the PM launched Digital India in 2014, he had three objectives. First was using technology to transform the lives of ordinary citizens, thereby improving governance and democracy, and the second, was to create more opportunities for our youth, and expand our digital economy and investments. The third objective was about creating global leadership capabilities in India,” he said.
On the second objective of creating more opportunities, it is clear from the last two years that if it was not for technology, ours would have been a far different response and many more lives and livelihoods and much more economic destructions would have happened, the minister said.
Reminding the achievements of the government, he said, “Today we are the fastest growing economy in the world; the fastest growing startup and innovation ecosystem in the world. We have created 100 unicorns. We have received the highest foreign direct investments of any country in the world.”
In the last one year, we have created almost 10 lakh new jobs in IT and electronics. Students having digital skills and digital training will get tremendous new opportunities in jobs and entrepreneurship in the new India.
“We are a country that has created 100 unicorns, which means 100 billionaires. They are all youngsters who have worked and studied hard, created innovations, and created wealth and prosperity for themselves. That is the new India,” he said.
He also launched the NECB2.0 project, for capacity building and training in digital skill sets and current industry demanding technologies for various sections of society in the northeastern states. The project is funded by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Govt of India. National Institute of Electronics and Information Technology (NIELIT) is the Implementing agency, through its centres at Agartala, Aizwal, Gangtok Guwahati, Imphal, Itanagar, Kohima and Shillong.
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