This Article is From Nov 05, 2015

Arisal to be Maharashtra's First Digital Village: Devendra Fadnavis

Arisal to be Maharashtra's First Digital Village: Devendra Fadnavis

Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis wa addressing a Microsoft expo in Mumbai. (file photo)

Mumbai: Arisal village, the 'malnutrition capital' of Maharashtra, would soon become the first digital village in the country said Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis.

Addressing Microsoft's 'Future Unleashed: Accelerating India' expo, Mr Fadnavis said, "With help from Microsoft, the first digital village is coming up at Arisal, which is the capital of malnutrition in the country,' adding that the state plans to have 50 digital hamlets by the end of next year.

"Creating one village will not suffice, have told Satya (Nadella of Microsoft) that we need to create 50 such villages by 2016," he said.

The chief minister said that "creating smart cities is creating efficiency and that "unless our cities become efficient, we will be exploiting nature."

He was addressing the largest ever consumer expo by the Redmond-based technology major Microsoft on the occasion of 25th anniversary of its operations in the country.

"Arisal is also called the capital of malnutrition but with an ICT-based smart project, we can change this. We are looking to integrate ICT into healthcare, education, energy and other areas," the Chief Minister said.

"We want to empower people and we will look for support from Microsoft to enable digitisation of processes," he added.

In answer to a question about about future plans of easing rules to do business in the state, Mr Fadnavis said he wants to make the state the most preferred location for investments.

"We are trying to remove more rules. Earlier, as many as 76 permissions were needed to set up a new business, and it would take a maximum of three years to get them. But now we've brought down the number of permissions to just 37," Mr Fadnavis said.

Mr Fadnavis said his government was trying to bring them further down to 25 in three months.
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