Portal to connect India’s poor
India’s first multilingual portal for the poor will provide information on agriculture, health, primary education, rural energy and e-governance. The India Development Gateway portal, an initiative of the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, was recently launched by the President.
New Delhi: A new development portal aims to reach the heart of rural India. The India Development Gateway portal – executed by the Hyderabad based Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC) is part of its initiative to provide information products and services to the rural poor by collaborating with development stakeholders across government, NGOs, community based organisations, research and academia.
- The portal launch by the President/ Photo credit: CDAC
The InDG portal was launched on July 4, 2008 by President Pratibha Devisingh Patil at the Indian capital.
Supported by the eGovernance division of the Department of IT, Government of India, the portal will seek to foster inclusive growth and empower its rural users through relevant information in six languages, Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Marathi, Bengali and English.
Knowledge will center on sectors related to rural livelihoods through its focus on agriculture, health, primary education, rural energy and e-governance.
Last mile stop
“A space has been created in the virtual world where knowledge and experience transcend geographical distances to benefit citizens at the last mile,” said President Patil in her address.
The portal would help connect panchayats across the country, making them “knowledge hubs” and help inform on various government schemes and their benefits, said the President.
While praising the initiative for bridging information gaps in rural India, she also expressed hope that the portal would enable women and weaker sections to access the benefits of ICT. “Technological interventions that are gender sensitive are the need of the hour,” she added.
Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Thiru A. Raja described the initiative as yet another attempt to reach the power of IT to the unreached. Referring to the one lakh common service centres (CSCs) to be launched in India's villages, he expressed hope the portal would help synergise different government initiatives by becoming a nerve centre of knowledge for the rural masses.
“ICT has changed the way people perceive development,” said Minister of State for Communications and Information Technology, Jyotiraditya Scindia. He hoped the portal would create “a win-win situation” for government and people at large in knowledge dissemination and help empower the youth.
The InDG portal launch was attended by partner organisations, stakeholders and senior officials, including eminent scientist Prof. M.S. Swaminathan, chairman of the InDG initiative, Jainder Singh, Secretary, Department of Information Technology and R. Chandrashekhar, Additional Secretary, IT.
An exhibition highlighting various ICT initiatives for rural areas was inaugurated by Thiru Raja.
