The Union Budget on Wednesday outlined several initiatives to drive India’s technology agenda and boost digital infrastructure, including new centres of excellence for artificial intelligence, National Data Governance Policy, and Entity DigiLocker. Presenting the Union Budget for 2023-24, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman asserted that India’s rising global profile is because of several accomplishments such as unique world-class digital public infrastructure, entailing Aadhaar, Co-Win and UPI. Sitharaman, in her Budget speech, spoke of tech infrastructure and digital ecosystem as well as measures in new-age areas of Artificial Intelligence and 5G. The Budget also proposed to deepen the domestic value addition in mobile phone manufacturing through customs duty relief on the import of certain parts and inputs like camera lens. “Our vision for the Amrit Kaal includes technology-driven and knowledge-based economy with strong public finances, and a robust financial sector,” Sitharaman said. To unleash innovation and research by start-ups and academia, a National Data Governance Policy will be brought out, she said adding this will enable access to anonymised data. Further, three centres of excellence for Artificial Intelligence will be set up in top educational institutions for realising the vision of `Make AI in India and Make AI work for India, she said.