Atmanirbhar Bharat: Internet and Data Communication a Challenge !!

Atmanirbhar Bharat: Internet and Data Communication a Challenge !! To the Hon'ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi ji; Respected sir, On 22nd March 2022, the Minister of Roads and Transport of our country and one of your key colleagues, Shri Nitin Gadkari, announced in Parliament that by December 2024, India's roads would be on par with those of the United States. It is a matter of pride and happiness that our government is focusing on the development of infrastructure such as roads, airports, ports, railway passenger and freight transport and industrial corridors etc. You yourself on July 1, 2015 , announced Digital India scheme and through that in 2020 government announced plan to connect 6 lakhs grampanchayats and 700 digital villages in the country by internet . To achieve this you are ready to lay 28 lakh kilometers of optical fiber cable. This has led to the availability of facilities like digital payments for transparent transactions and reduction of cash transactions, with a visible result of 44 billion digital transactions in 2021. Because of this many government documents became readily available to public. While thinking on this subject, one thing came to my mind, that it is the IT infrastructure that is the backbone of all digital activities. In the recent Russia's war against Ukraine, it is seen that despite the heavy bombings from Russia, Ukraine's Internet and telephone infrastructure have not yet fully collapsed. Looking at the communication between the freedom fighters in Ukraine, President Zelenski himself and other military officials, as well as media, it seems that the system has not yet completely collapsed. One of the reason is the IT, Internet and Telecom infrastructure in Ukrain is well developed as well as dispersed and distributed geographically. The electricity required to run this infrastructure is also distributed so it is difficult to shut it off at one switch, this it what is understood. In India, Internet and telecommunication facilities are scattered in major cities, but data center is a big issue in terms of internet. It has more foreign investment than Indians. Newer technologies such as IoT (Internet of Things) or machine learning or cloud computing rely solely on data on servers. Right from the files of the Ministry of Defense to all the files of the Zilla Parishad or the government documents of Ministries of all central and state governments, their accounts, major financial institutions including banks etc all depend on these serves. The place where such servers are installed is called a data center. This is an important part of IT infrastructure. If it is in the hands of foreigners and tomorrow there is an incident like foreign sanctions etc. or the mind of foreign investors suddenly changes then the system of the country may collapse. There is also the fear of our information falling into the hands of foreigners. Types like hacking are familiar to all. As well known fact, the two largest data centers in the world are of China Mobile and China Telecom in China, followed by the United Kingdom and the United States. No. 10 in the list is of "Yotta NM1" based on American technology is a data center operational at Panvel, Maharashtra, India. It is a subsidiary of Hiranandani Group. Now looking at more and more progress of India in Digital economy, more and more usage of Internet, telecom and data centers, I think the data centers must belong to Indian people / Indian companies or the Government of India through BSNL or MTNL etc. Please look into the matter. Madhav Bhole