Govt to spend Rs 12,000 cr on e-goverance and e-learning

MUMBAI: The government will spend Rs 12,000 crore in next four years on e-governance and to take e-learning to schools in every district across the country, IT secretary Rajeev Ratan Shah said on Tuesday evening.
"The government will launch a pilot project to take e-learning to 20 schools in the country spread over seven districts", Shah said at the inaugural of Nasscom 2003 here.
To be funded by government and the industry, the project would eventually cover all the six lakh schools in India. Computer labs would also be set up to aid the learning process, where students can use multimedia and other software to enhance their learning capabilities, he added.
Terming India''s one billion population as both "a digital opportunity and digital challenge", the secretary called on IT companies to tap the potential of the domestic market.
"The country needed half-a-dozen Narayana Murthy''s (of Infosys fame) and same number of Infosys, Satyam''s and Wipro''s to make the digital revolution a reality", he added.
Shah said the government would also set up "country portals and citizens portals" at the state level to facilitate e-commerce and e-business in the country.
Referring to Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), he said a single window would be installed to expand the domain, which was at a nascent stage at present.
He said India has also developed a super computer - Param Padma, a one terraflop machine with multifarious applications for space, drug discovery, agro and biotech.