The distance between the citizen and government has been bridged tremendously in India, the minister said

India is ready to partner with all like-minded nations towards development in technology embedded governance, Union Minister of State for Electronics & Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar has said.

Speaking at the UNCTAD High-level policy dialogue on Wednesday, he said India had demonstrated the power of technology in governance working for the common citizen and small businesses.

India had successfully showcased a technology-led model of governance by embedding technology into the governance and transforming the lives of people, Chandrasekhar added.

He advocated harnessing digital technologies and public digital platforms towards technology embedded governance and social inclusion.

In addition to India, Indonesia and Sri Lanka also shared policy experiences towards digital inclusion & social empowerment at the policy dialogue.

The webinar was a pre-event organized in the run-up to the fifteenth session of the Ministerial Conference of the UNCTAD, the Ministry of Electronics and IT said.

Talking about the story of India's digitization drive, Chandrasekhar said that India’s success story of Digitalization is driven by the public and private sector in the global technology eco-system in terms of providing innovative solutions to the world.

He highlighted that India is poised today as one of the largest connected countries in the world in terms of Internet connectivity with around 80 crore (800 million) people online and one of the world’s largest rural broadband connectivity projects being executed.

The distance between the citizen and government has been bridged tremendously over the last 6 years by leveraging technology and public digital platforms including digital identity, digital payments systems and digital literacy and thus preventing the leakage of social subsidies, the minister pointed out.