Google on Monday said that it was collaborating with the government to support and enable Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision for 'Digital India'. The company said that as part of the plan, it would run a number of campaigns in collaboration with the Indian government.

The noteworthy among these programmes are:

• MyGov, the citizen engagement platform of the government, and Google will soon launch contest to develop a mobile app for the PM's Office. Google claimed that the "mobile app will bring the PMO to every citizen and the contest will showcase how Indians can build a world class app".

• Google would build a multi -language ecosystem on the web to help the government transition into the increasingly 'mobile' India.

•  The company will push programmes like Helping Women get Online and getting Indian SMEs Online in a bid to promote the digital empowerment of citizens. It will also continue to map and photograph heritage and culture sites to bring them online.

• To encourage digital literacy and Internet safety, Google will introduce curriculums for schools, officials and elected representatives.

While announcing the initiative, R S Sharma, secretary of the Department of Information Technology said, "The Digital India Program has been launched with the vision of transforming India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy. It can truly transform India and bring it on par with other developed countries. I'm happy Google is coming forward to roll out initiatives that will contribute to the Digital India vision. I'm sure others will come forward and join this movment."

Rajan Anandan, vice president and managing director of Google India, added: "India is already home to the 3rd largest number of internet users globally with 245 million users as of June 2014. We are on track to become the 2nd largest user market by 2015 and a 500 million-user market by 2016. Yet, there are more than a billion people who will need to be brought online for India to realize the vision of a digitally connected, knowledge economy. Prime Minister Modi's Digital India program will play a transformational role in achieving this."