Friday 03 September 2010 Government 2.0: The Road Ahead
65 days, 13,716 villages, Gujarat sets its broadband target

The state government is optimistic about providing broadband connectivity till the village level as Gujarat has already achieved 100 per cent electrification of its rural areas under the Jyoti Gram Yojana—the rural electrification programme.

By Pravin Prashant
New Delhi:
In a major initiative towards empowering those at the bottom of the pyramid and bridging the digital divide, the Government of Gujarat is looking at providing broadband facilities across all its villages within two month.<!--more-->

According to the state Chief Minister Narendra Modi, 13,716 of its 18,065 villages will be linked using broadband connectivity in next 65 days, making Gujarat the first state to extend such facility till the village level.

Modi also informed that the state government was optimistic about providing connectivity till the village level as Gujarat has already completed its rural electrification programme—Jyoti Gram Yojana.

Gujarat is the first state in India to achieve 100 per cent electrification of villages.

Once connected, the panchayat offices and eGRAMs are expected to form a powerful socio-economic network supporting information dissemination and facilitating e-Governance initiatives in the state.

The project would link the village panchayats and Common Service Centres (CSCs) located in the remotest corners of the state and will ensure high quality and cost-effective video, voice and data services in the areas of agriculture, e-Governance, health and education.

The connectivity will also facilitate point to point and point to multi-point video conferencing services, voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) services and both intra and Internet services from these village panchayats and CSCs.

According to sources, Bharti Airtel is partnering with the Government of Gujarat to provide broadband infrastructure for the prestigious eGRAM connectivity project.

The company has also designed a comprehensive VSAT-based solution to provide last mile connectivity to these villages.

Modi, who was in Delhi on Saturday to inaugurate a Gujarat Summit organised by industry association Assocham, also said that the state government was planning to set up a Nano-city and Gujarat International Financial Tax City (GIFT) at Gandhinagar.

This is really good news especially when people are running towards cities just so that their kids could get access to such services. Sometimes the sole reason to move to a city is to get access to good infrastructure and education facilities which otherwise non-existent in rural areas. If successfully implemented and full potential achieved, this would help ease the migration rush big cities like Ahmedabad and Baroda are facing.

I have to give it to Shri Narendra Modi for his leadership, vision and a will to empower a common man of Gujarat.

This is an encouraging news to develop villages in Gujarat. Next time I want to hear a news that every household in Gujrat State has been provided with piped drinking water and piped cooking gas.

S.C. Aggarwal,
Founder, Poverty Trust,
aggarwal@indiainfo.com

Hats off to the Government of Gujarat.
The digital divide between the Urban and Rural Education may be narrowing.
The rural school children of Gujarat will definately enjoy and more confident to face the challanges in the future.
This is a welcoming initiative.
I wish all the success to the team working on it.
With all best wishes,
pavan

Sounds very impresive... if other states would follow suit and the infrastructure would not be like the initial days of VPT (Villege Public Telephony) then it is a great achievement.

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