Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi Reportedly Signs U.S. Tech Deals As He Pushes For ‘Digital India’

"Digital India" programme was launched by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on July 1. USA Today noted on Monday that the programme calls "for more high-speed Internet access and tech jobs to raise the standard of living in a country where so many still live in poverty."

As he pushes for the programme, the Indian prime minister reportedly signed US tech deals, as noted by FT.com on Sunday. The signing reportedly took place during his two-day Silicon Valley tour.

Modi meets Facebook founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg after he visited the Facebook headquarters on Sunday. The Indian prime minister discussed the importance of social media in front of almost one thousand people.

"We are an $8 trillion economy today. My dream is to become a $20 trillion dollar economy," Modi says during his speech.

On the other hand, Zuckerberg adds that people could experience "daily bonding" because of social media.

"One of the greatest opportunities we have in the world today is to connect everyone to the internet," he says. "When I came to government, I saw that one of the problems that governments have is that there is a big gap between the government and the people."

"But with social media we have daily bonding," Zuckerberg adds.

"We used to have elections every five years, but now it is every five minutes. This is a huge strength of democracy."

Reports reveal that Facebook is enticing Modi as the prime minister pushes "to expand in the potentially lucrative Indian market."

In addition, Modi also visited Google headquarters on the same day wherein he met Indian-born chief executive Sundar Pichai. Google has confirmed its plans to launch wireless internet to 500 railways in India. Aside from that, Microsoft has also pledged to provide low-cost broadband to some 500,000 Indian villages.