India today is poised to be one of the largest connected countries in terms of Internet connectivity, having around 800 million people online, and executing one of the largest rural broadband connectivity projects in the world, according to a Minister.

While talking about the story of India’s digitization drive, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, junior minister at Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (Meity), said that the success of the initiative is driven by both the public and private sectors in terms of providing innovative solutions to the world.

Chandrasekhar was speaking at the UNCTAD high-level policy dialogue Wednesday. Ministers from India, Indonesia and Sri Lanka shared policy experiences towards digital inclusion and social empowerment at the conference.

The webinar was a pre-event organized in the run-up to the 15^thfifteenth session of the Ministerial Conference of the UNCTAD.

The Indian Minister also shared that the distance between the citizen and government has been bridged in a big way, over the last six years, by leveraging technology and public digital platforms, including digital identity, digital payments systems and digital literacy, thus preventing leakage of social subsidies.

Chandrasekhar highlighted the importance of technology in governance, which India has demonstrated ably by working for the common citizen and small businesses.

The IT Minister shared how, under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India has successfully showcased a technology led model of governance by embedding technology into the governance and transforming the lives of people.

India is ready to partner with all like-minded nations towards development in the technology embedded governance, he said.