The Punjab state government plans to establish a High-Tech Cycle Valley at the Dhanansu village in the Ludhiana district.
The project was created as a part of the government’s strategy to bolster the industrial sector in the state and create more job opportunities for the youth.
According to reports, the High-Tech Valley will cover 383 acres of land, and the modalities concerning the purchasing of the land have been completed. The layout plan has also been approved. The project would entail the cost of IN ₹300 crores (around US $43.5 million).
When he announced the project, the Minister of Industries and Commerce of Punjab, Sunder Sham Arora, said that the state government is working diligently towards setting up similar industrial units in the state. The project is environment-friendly and will provide employment avenues to the youth.
He also said that the requisite clearances to establish the cycle valley in Ludhiana have been taken, apart from those from the Union Ministry of Environment, Forests, and Climate Change in August 2018. The Minister also added that a 100-acre plot was allotted to the M/S Hero Cycles Limited, Ludhiana in December 2018 for the setting up of its main unit.
The Minister added that the organisation has already begun the construction of a boundary wall around the plot. He informed that, as per the project, the PSTCL would set up an electricity sub-station of 400 Kilowatts (KW) on 30 acres of land for which the land has been allotted and a payment of IN ₹9.45 crores (about US $1.37 million) has been made.
The cycle valley will be connected with the Chandigarh-Ludhiana National Highway by constructing a 100 foot-wide and 8.5 Kilometre (Km) long external road.
Basic facilities of the infrastructural nature such as internal roads, boundary walls, drainage systems, water supply networks, and water sewerage will be put in place by March 2021.
Tech projects around the country are generating huge job opportunities for India’s youth. In fact, as OpenGov reported earlier, IoT and AI-based applications could create over 2.8 million jobs in rural India over 8 to 10 years with an annual value of IN ₹60,000 crores (about US $8.9 billion).
Out of the 2.8 million jobs, at least 2.1 million will be created for the agriculture sector and another 700,000 jobs will be created for the rural healthcare sector.
According to a study, the percentage of employment in the country’s agriculture sector has consistently reduced from 52% in 2010 to 42% in 2018. IoT-based applications have the potential to reverse this trend.
The study highlighted that key applications like satellite mapping, electronic marketplace, livestock traceability, climate sensing stations, product traceability, and agriculture drones have the potential to transform the ailing agriculture sector.
Currently, as much as 60% of India’s healthcare professionals serve 30% of the population (residing in urban India). This trend is likely to change as leading healthcare service providers to open new specialty hospitals in Tier 3 and Tier 4 towns.
The government’s Ayushman Bharat initiative is also expected to transform the primary healthcare sector in the country and will help introduce IoT based applications to a rural patient ecosystem.
Applications like remote medical assistance and surgery, smart diagnosis, cloud-based Eye Screening, pre-emptive oncology diagnosis, smart ambulance, and emergency care, medical record digitisation, and smart consulting can help bridge the gap between rural healthcare centres and urban hospitals.