Ashwini Vaishnaw, Union Minister of Communications, Electronics and Information Technology and Railways, has urged states to tap significant opportunities in the electronics manufacturing space at the first meeting of the Apex Monitoring Authority for the National Industrial Corridor Development Programme.
According to Vaishnaw, dedicated zones in industrial corridors for electronics manufacturing will yield rich benefits, including driving massive job creation in the sector.
The minister also proposed the formation of a working group between the Ministry of Commerce and Industry and the Department of Telecommunications. Such a working group will help in addressing crucial aspects including optical fibre ducts and space for 5G telecom towers in a scientific and methodical way to ensure robust connectivity in these industrial zones or nodes. He observed that optical fibre connectivity will be an important component of the entire planning exercise and advised that provision of ducts alongside the roads in these zones would eliminate the need for unnecessary digging at a later stage.
Additionally, Vaishnaw asserted that data centres, especially edge computing data centres, would play a critical role in the future manufacturing for Industry 4.0. To this end, he requested sufficient space and double or triple redundancy power connection for the data centres.
Moreover, the minister noted that rail connectivity has to be an integral part of the planning of all the nodes. He informed that a new generation regional rail is being developed which will have very fast acceleration, and is expected to be ready by April 2023.
