India’s largest National Data Centre to be established in Bhopal

• The IT Minister announced the government’s plans of establishing the largest National Data Centre in Bhopal.
  
• The rural BPO promotion scheme will be increased to 1 lakh seats from the current 48,000.
  
• Other schemes like Aadhar, eSign, BHIM App and DigiLocker are also expected to be expanded.

On Monday, the IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad got on a soapbox in front of some journalists on the completion of four years of the present government. Following the inauguration of a National Data Centre (NDC) in Bhubaneswar this May, Prasad announced the government’s plans of establishing the largest National Data Centre in Bhopal. Prasad also announced that the NDC will have a capacity of five lakh servers.

Throwing in some more announcements at the occasion, the minister mentioned that the rural BPO promotion scheme will be increased to 1 lakh seats from the current 48,000.

So, what will the National Data Centre do?

A National Data Centre’s primary aim is to provide ‘the citizens with online services and the e-Governance projects launched by the government’, according to the official website of National Informatics Centre (NIC), the organisation under the government’s IT Department that is responsible for the establishment of the NDCs.

As India becomes the largest data consumer, there is a pressing need to increase data storage for apps and websites of these services. And this is exactly what the new NDC will cater to. However, this is not the first in the country, there are four other NDCs in Delhi, Bhubaneswar, Hyderabad and Pune; but this is expected to be the largest.

NIC has announced that the Madhya Pradesh Government has already made the land available for the project and the centre should come up within the next two years.

Rural BPO promotion scheme

Prasad, who wants to make India the ‘hub for BPO movement’, said that the expansion of the rural BPO promotion scheme would bring about several benefits. The scheme is aimed at increasing employment in India, both directly and indirectly - employment related to creating the BPOs and working for them once they are created. An added perk would be finding this sort of employment near your home, in small towns. Currently, people from small towns have to relocate to bigger cities to work in these BPOs.

With this being the election year, the government is also making sure it makes the right statements about policies that have already been implemented. In his speech, Prasad mentioned that Aadhar, world’s largest biometric identification with 121 crore unique IDs, is already benefiting the public. According to the minister, Aadhar has helped in the direct benefit transfer of ₹4 trillion to the poor. Furthermore, ₹900 billion have been saved by removing the fictitious beneficiaries from this list, said Prasad. The government is now aiming at making the Aadhar more “robust” along with the expansion of other digital services like BHIM App, DigiLocker and eSign.