India hold the 58th position in the world on e-readiness ranking - an important measure of a digital society, Minister of State for Information Technology Sachin Pilot informed the Rajya Sabha today.

Replying to supplementaries during Question Hour, he said e-readiness is the measure of the quality of country's information community technology (ICT) infrastructure and ability of its consumers, businesses and Government to use ICT for their benefit.

"As per the Economist Intelligence Unit's e-readiness ranking for the year 2009, India ranks 58 among the countries of the world," he said.

IT sector provides direct employment to 2.5 million people and has created eight million indirect jobs, he said.

The Government, he said, had launched National Knowledge Network at an outlay of Rs 5,990 crore, to interconnect all universities, libraries, laboratories, hospitals and agricultural institutions to enable them to share data and resources over high speed information network.

He said the Government plans to connect all village panchayats through broadband internet connection in three years.

Under the National e-Governance Plan, the Department of Information Technology was establishing common, shared e-Infrastructure. Rs 1,623.20 crore has been approved for State Data Centres (SDC) Schemes besides Rs 1,649 crore for setting up 100,000 Common Services Centres.

"High mobile penetration (more than 550 million) and increasing internet penetration in the country is providing a conducive environment for moving towards a digital society," he added.