Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented her fifth Union Budget on Wednesday. She outlined seven priorities for the government during the “Amrit Kaal”, a term first used by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to describe the next 25-year period when the government will work to modernise India. “This is the first Budget in Amrit Kaal,” the finance minister said at the beginning of her Budget speech.
One of the government’s main priorities in achieving that has been building a “Digital India”, which will stand on two pillars: ease of doing business and ease of living.
Here are some key highlights of the Budget 2023 towards building a Digital India:
FM Sitharaman said a digital public infrastructure for agriculture would be built as open source, open standard, and interoperable public good. The government will set up an agriculture accelerator fund to encourage agriculture-related startups in rural areas.
She said a national cooperative database is being created to map cooperative societies across the country.
A national digital library for children and adolescents will be set up to facilitate quality reading. This will help in building a culture of learning. Services of NGOs will be sought to provide age-appropriate reading material. With the setting up of digital libraries, people across the country should be able to access books and other reading materials without having to buy them in physical form.
The government also proposes to set up three centres of excellence for artificial intelligence in top educational institutions.
FM Sitharaman said the government would formulate a National Data Governance policy, which will enable anonymised data, and besides KYC process will be simplified by adopting a risk-based system.
PAN will be used as a common identifier for all digital systems of specified government agencies.
100 labs for developing applications for 5G services will be set up in engineering institutions.
FM Sitharaman proposed to launch Phase III of e-courts. The government is making efforts to make the legal system more accessible to people by using technology. The Supreme Court has already begun streaming its proceedings on online platforms.
She also proposes to set up a single-window system for registrations and approvals in IFSC Gift City. Companies would be able to set up “data embassies” in the economic zone.
