New Delhi : (IANS) Communications and Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said on Tuesday that the government is taking BPOs to small towns to create job opportunities in rural areas of India.

“We are taking BPOs (business process outsourcing) to small towns of India to provide employment to youth so that they don’t have to migrate to cities for jobs,” Ravi Shankar Prasad said at the Digital India Summit in the capital.

The minister said that only 398 km of optical fiber cables were laid in Indian villages before the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government came into power. “Now more than 1 lakh km of OFC is laid, touching more than 50,000 village panchayats.”

He said the nation’s future lay in its talent clubbed with the information technology, and pointed out that the country witnessed a huge jump in manufacturing of mobile phones that “has grown by 83 percent since last year”.

“Now almost every big mobile phone brand has a manufacturing here. Investments in electronic manufacturing prior to May 2014 was only Rs.11,000 crore. Now it has crossed Rs.128,000 crore.”

The minister said growth of internet was an important tool for development and described it as an “open, fair, democratic, neutral and plural media for empowerment of people”.

“It (Internet) must remain non-discriminatory,” he added.

The minister stated that “digitally empowered India is the ultimate aim of Digital India Mission.”