 "Ensure tech is available in regional languages to empower people: Irani")
Industry should ensure that technology is available in regional languages to empower people, Women and Child Development Minister Smriti Zubin Irani said on Wednesday.
Addressing Nasscom global inclusion summit, Irani said the government has used technology to bring transparency in the system and empower people, especially women.
"We need to ensure that technologies are available in regional languages," Irani said.
She said that the immense potential that lies in the country's ethnic, religious, geographical and linguistic diversity is yet to be leveraged or exponentially utilised.
"I'm also of the belief that when you have technology available in multiple languages, which are indigenous to our people, you also empower people more if you ensure that there are affordable devices available for engagement.
The government has rightly pronounced the PLI scheme as such device manufacturing in India," Irani said.
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She said it is time to give the additional push so that the manufacturing can be scaled up and affordable devices can be made more and more available to people as part of "Make in India '' story.
The ministers said that the Prime Minister has used technology to transparently transfer subsidies into the bank account of people and empowered them through schemes like Jan Dhan Yojana which has especially benefited women.
Irani said that there have been conversations earlier where people were apprehensive about giving big loans to women.
"I remember people saying that especially women from rural landscapes do not have the capacity to access credit because they don't know how to engage with a financial institution. I am very delighted that 70 per cent of the beneficiaries are women. But what brings me delight is not the number 70 per cent. The fact that these women are walking up to a bank branch with a business plan. Filling out all those documents in a bank, availing the facility," Irani said.
She said that the NPA on loans given to women has also been very low.