NEW DELHI: The Digital Bharat Nidhi (DBN), under the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) to digitally transform rural areas across the country through high-speed broadband.
“The objective of the MoU is to drive rural development in institutions supported by NABARD, by providing access to digital services, digital governance, and promoting a digital economy through high-speed broadband connectivity under BharatNet program,” the Ministry of Communications said in an official statement on Thursday.
Key areas covered under the pact include reference data sharing, digital content sharing, digital services integration, awareness and capacity, high-speed broadband access to enable digital economy, and the inclusion of ICT infrastructure.
The NABARD will share information, including geo-coordinates and contact details of institutions, and DBN will share geo-coordinates of BharatNet Point of Presence (PoP) locations in Gram Panchayats (GPs) from where high-speed broadband connectivity can be extended to rural institutions and enterprises.
The MoU was signed in the presence of Neeraj Mittal, secretary, DoT, Niraj Verma, administrator, DBN, Sanjiwan Sinha, project director (PMU), DBN, Robert Ravi, chairman and managing director, BSNL, Shaji KV, chairman and managing director, NABARD, and Sanjay Kumar Gupta, chief general manager, NABARD.
DBN has been instrumental in enabling high-speed broadband and mobile connections across GPs and villages in the country. This collaboration, through high-speed broadband connectivity under BharatNet will further provide digital impetus to the institutions such as primary agriculture co-operative credit societies, and others, supported and computerised by NABARD.
