India 2018

Communications and Information Technology 119
to facilitate equal access to Electronics and ICT. It recognizes the diversity of
differently abled persons and provides for their specific needs.
Electronics Development Fund: Electronics Development Fund (EDF) is set up as
a "Fund of Funds" to participate in professionally managed "Daughter Funds"
which in turn will provide risk capital to companies developing new
technologies in the area of electronics, nano-electronics and Information
Technology (IT). This fund is expected to foster R&D and innovation in these
technology sectors. Twenty two Daughter Funds have been selected for
investment through EDF.
IT Promotion
India BPO Promotion Scheme (IBPS) has been launched for promotion of BPO/
ITES operations across the country including small towns and rural areas. This
will boost creation of employment opportunities and balanced growth of
Information Technology and Information Technology Enabled Services (IT/
ITES) sector in each state. An outlay of ` 493 crores upto March 2019 has been
set aside.
North East BPO Promotion Scheme (NEBPS) has been initiated under
Digital India Programme, to incentivize establishment of 5000 seats in BPO/
ITeS Operations in North East region (NER) for creation of employment
opportunities and growth of IT-ITeS Industry.
Promotion of R&D and Innovation
National Supercomputing Mission (NSM) has been initiated with an outlay of
` 4,500 crores which will enable the country to leapfrog to the league of world
class computing power nations. The activities would include creation of stateof-the-art
HPC facilities and infrastructure at academic/R&D institutions,
development of HPC applications of national priority for major science and
engineering domains, promote R&D in HPC leading to next generation exascale
computing readiness and human resource development to handle and
spearhead HPC activities in the country.
Usage of ICT in Indian Languages
Lack of content in Indian languages is a big challenge and it was discovered
that there is lack of content creation tools. To bridge this gap under National
Rollout Plan, open source software tools have been localized and made available
in the form of language wise free of cost CDs. These are distributed by post and
can also be downloaded through http://www.ildc.in portal. The CDs contain
various software tools like Libre Office, Open Type Fonts, Unicode Typing Tool,
Sakal Bharati font, Firefox Web Browser, E-mailing Client, Graphics tool, etc.,
for all 22 recognized Indian languages.
e-waste Awareness Programme : The Ministry under EMDP programme initiated
an "Awareness Programme on Environmental Hazards of Electronic Waste" to