Ravi Shankar Prasad was born on August 30, 1954 in Patna the capital city of the northern state of Bihar. He has post graduate degrees in Political Science as well as Law.
In 1995, Prasad became a member of the National Executive Committee of the Bharatiya Janata Party. Later, he held ministerial posts in the Vajpayee Government (1998-2004). When Prime Minister Modi won the elections in 2014, Prasad was appointed as Minister for Communications and Information Technology. In July 2016, this Ministry was split into two: Ministry for Communications and the Ministry for Electronics and Information Technology and Ravi Shankar Prasad retained the latter.
Prasad has led the Digital India program as Minister for Electronics and Information Technology since 2014. He is known for promoting digital development in rural India by creating a network of 300,000 village-level digital entrepreneurs who operate digital service delivery kiosks known as Common Service Centers across India. These centers assist people in booking train tickets, applying for the Ayushman Bharat health insurance card, paying utility bills, and other banking and insurance services. This initiative has created job opportunities for 1.2 million rural youth.
Under Prasad’s leadership, India developed an ecosystem in emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Internet of Things, and Virtual Reality.
In 2014, when the Narendra Modi government took office, there were only two mobile phone manufacturing units in India. In 2019, there are 268 mobile and ancillary manufacturing units in India, and the country has become the second largest mobile phone producer in the world. Samsung started the world’s largest mobile phone manufacturing unit in Noida in 2018. Additionally, the production of other consumer electronics in India doubled in these five years.
In the Modi 2.0 government, Prasad has been appointed as: Minister for Law and Justice, Minister for Communications, and Minister for Electronics and Information Technology. He has promised to work toward establishing a National Data Grid on a priority basis which, along with the data protection act, will establish the bed rock for localizing all data related to Indian citizens.
The minister cited passage of the Personal Data Protection Bill, fostering start-ups, manufacturing of medical equipment, social media/intermediary guidelines, and giving the next push to the ambitious Digital India Program as among the top priorities of the government.
