In what has the potential to turn into a very powerful partnership aimed towards empowering and energizing the Digital India initiative, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) has partnered up with Google India to announce a slew of partnerships and initiatives aimed towards empowering the citizens of the country and granting them access to safer, enhanced digital services.
The collaboration was announced at an event in New Delhi by Aruna Sundarajan, MEITY Secretary, and Rajan Anandan, VP SouthEast Asia and India, Google. Together, the two have formidable resources, data and tech at their disposal and will leverage it to ensure safe and secure digital payments, grant digital skills for artisans and Android skills training for students and developers.
Speaking at the event, Aruna Sundarajan, Secretary, MEITY said
The Ministry of Electronics and IT intends to give impetus to the Hon’ble Prime Minister’s recent call for a ‘New India’. Collaboration with Google will be hugely beneficial in harnessing the capabilities of technology for the “India growth” story.
Google India will be working with the Indian ministry to bring enhancements to a varied spectrum of services. For instance, Google India and MEITY will support the launch of a ‘Digital Payments Security Alliance’. This will be done with the Data Security Council of India (DSCI) on-board as well.
Banks, companies in the fintech sector and the Government will all be part of this alliance and together, the group will work towards ensuring that security is one of the keystones of India’s digital and financial Inclusion initiatives. So we are talking about campaigns to get users to adopt digital/mobile payments, Train the Trainer Programs for CSCs, Financial Inclusion Agencies. All this will together help lay the framework for a robust digital financial infrastructure for the Indian economy and translate into long term gains.
The second mission of this collaboration has to do with the Handicrafts industry. With over 7 million artisans, the industry is the second largest source of employment in India. Google India is already taking an interest in the sector and earlier this year, had announced a Digital Unlocked program with the intent of providing training to SMBs . The company is extending this training in partnership with MEITY to over 100,000 artisans per year across India.
In case you are wondering how exactly Google can help artisans, the company will aim to make a greater market available for their products by leveraging he power of the world wide web.
The National Institute of Electronics & Information Technology (NIELIT) will be participating in the process of imparting this training. Google India meanwhile, will equip the National Institute trainers with training modules and content, who will then have the responsibility of reaching as wide a swath of the country as possible through the 10,000 NIELIT centres spread across the country. Google India will help here as well and will support the outreach program by providing mobile training labs to reach artisan clusters across India.
Finally, Google will continue to build upon the Android Skilling program it had announced earlier with the intent of training two million developers in India. The company willl extend the same course curriculum to the National Institute of Electronics and Information Technology (NIELIT). The institute will then help train over 100K developers and students through its network of centers.
Speaking about his company’s collaboration with the Indian Government, Rajan Anandan, VP, SouthEast Asia and India, Google said:
We are delighted to support Honourable PM Modi’s vision of creating a ‘New india’ where technology unleashes a wave of new opportunities. We are committed to and look forward to working with MEITY across these broad range of initiatives and help every Indian to leverage the power of the Internet.
