Mamata to lay foundation stone of Silicon Valley today

Kolkata: Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee will lay the foundation stone of her government's flagship project 'Silicon Valley' on Monday. The Housing and Infrastructure Development Corporation has already earmarked 100 acres of urban land at Action Area II beside the Biswa Bangla Sarani near Eco Park for the project, which will be attracting top IT players across the country.

"Bengal is poised to take a lead when it comes to embracing emerging technologies like Blockchain, Fintech, Internet of Things (IoT), Embedded Technology, Artificial Intelligence, etc. The Silicon Valley, with its plug and play infrastructure, will encourage the IT firms associated with these technologies to take up space," a senior official of the state Information Technology (IT) department said.

Banerjee is expected to announce the IT department's work schedule and plan of action for the Silicon Valley project on Monday. As per plans there will be green building offices and tier 4 cloud based data centre in the hub.

According to sources, the IT department is working on a plan to provide co-working spaces in the proposed Silicon Valley project. "The concept of co-working is gaining momentum in the country. Quality innovation requires an environment of working in a community. So, we are trying to create facilities for co-working in Silicon Valley," said an official of the IT department.

The department is trying to develop the concept of offering infrastructure as a service in the proposed Silicon Valley hub. "We want people to come to this place and use the plug and play infrastructure on a weekly/monthly/yearly rental basis," he added.

The IT department, for the last few months, has been holding knowledge-sharing workshops every month at the Biswa Bangla Convention Centre in New Town, related to emerging technologies. Experts from all parts of the country and even from the world are speaking and sharing their experiences on the advantages of these new age technologies.

"Our vision is to move towards a decentralised and transparent ecosystem, where the government and every industry will be able to leverage benefits of these emerging technologies. We are laying a lot of emphasis on awareness and training of the people working in this sector, as well as for the future generation," the official maintained.

On January 31, Banerjee had announced her government's decision to set up the Silicon Valley hub. She had said that the idea was discussed in the Bengal Global Business Summit (BGBS), which was held on January 16 and 17 at the Biswa Bangla Convention Centre.