These schemes will help strengthen e-services in rural India

To mark the Good Governance Day, Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Thursday announced that the limit of postal life insurance has been raised from Rs 20,00,00 to Rs 50,00,000 besides launching one-month rental free MTNL broadband and landline combo plans on new bookings.

The 21 schemes he announced also included support for international patent protection in electronics and an Internet based real time system to provide eServices in rural India.

December 25 is being celebrated across the country as Good Governance Day, which Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said was ushered in by the previous NDA regime led by Atal Bihar Vajpayee and is being carried out in this government. It also coincides with Vajpayee's birthday.

"Good Governance can be effectively achieved through the vision of Digital India of digital infrastructure as a utility to every citizen, governance and services on demand and digital empowerment of citizens," Prasad said in his address.

In the last six months, the government has taken a number of landmark initiatives.

Digital India programme is committed to taking the cause of good governance forward in letter and spirit, he added.

Key projects include time stamping of digital signature, Integrated Indian Languages Virtual Keyboard for Android, PARAM Shavak (Super computer in box solution), .bharat domain in Gujarati and Bangla, e-launch of Support International Patent Protection in Electronics & IT scheme (SIP-EIT).

Prasad also handed over disbursements under the Modified Special Incentive Package Scheme(M-SIPS) and Electronics Manufacturing Clusters (EMC) disbursement.

Department of Electronics and IT (DeitY) also launched Gyansetu, which is an Internet based real time ICT system to provide eServices to the rural population and e-Governance Competency Framework (e-GCF).

Another launch was that of C-DOT's solution MAX-NG, a cost effective and smooth migration path to Internet Protocol Multimedia Systems (IMS).

It will ensure a smooth transition from old telephone system to voice over Internet protocol and will enable consumers to enjoy voice, data and video services on existing landlines at affordable cost.

Telecom Secretary Rajesh Garg said government has planned to cover about 55,669 villages as yet uncovered by mobile connectivity all over India in a phased manner by March 2019.

The focus is to reach remote areas like North-Eastern States, Himalayan States, Border States and Islands and more importantly the Left Wing Extremism affected areas in the country, he added.

DeitY Secretary R S Sharma said his department has taken various initiatives like MyGov, Aadhaar-enabled Biometric attendance system, Jeevan Pramaan, eGreetings, eSampark, National Digital Literacy Mission, eGovernance Competency Framework to promote good governance.