Prime Minister Narendra Modi Calls on IT Sector To Pool Resources For Social Causes

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday appealed to India’s IT and knowledge industries to harness their capabilities for social causes, which include helping improve agriculture productivity, expanding the social startup ecosystem and partnering with government initiatives such as Swachh Bharat and Skill India.

Addressing a town hall of chiefs and employees of technology companies and startups, Modi launched an app and portal called Self4Society, which is aimed at pooling the resources that corporates put in towards social causes and aligning them with government initiatives.

The portal will also help employees in identifying volunteering opportunities for social causes. They can also collaborate with other employees on such projects.

At the event, attended physically by over 2,000 people and virtually by several lakhs, Modi said even though the government is puttinga lot of effort and money towards social causes, everyone needs to contribute. “To take the country ahead, we need participation of all 125 crore Indians.” He added that through this joint effort, the country will make a place for itself in the world despite the challenges.

Modi also said since India has already become the third largest startup base in the world, social startups should become an intrinsic part of the ecosystem. He explained that the line is very thin between what is a business model and what is a social startup model and touched upon areas such as electric vehicles, which will serve both the purposes.

Industry leaders such as Sudha Murty, chairperson of Infosys Foundation, and Anand Mahindra, chairman of Mahindra Group, participated in the discussion. Mahindra said he pledges the group’s support towards the initiative and will immediately join it. Others present during the town hall included Tech MahindraCEO CP Gurnani, Nasscom president Debjani Ghosh, first CEO of TCS FC Kohli and Snapdeal co-founder Kunal Bahl.

Union minister for electronics and IT Ravi Shankar Prasad appealed to the industry to bring their technology edge to this space in the same way as they have done globally. “Our endeavour should be to help the last man in the queue, the marginalised and the deprived… You have made most of the Fortune 500 companies capable, you are home to 4 million direct employees, one-third of whom are women,” he said.

The platform has been developed by MyGov. – Gadgets Now