Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday warned that attacks on a country’s economy can be carried out through digital means as he inaugurated the Reserve Bank of India’s ₹169-crore Data Centre and Cybersecurity Training Institute in Bhubaneswar. The facilities are intended to strengthen the resilience, security and computing capacity of India’s financial infrastructure.
Speaking after the inauguration, Modi said modern conflict had moved beyond conventional warfare and that economic stability could be undermined through targeted digital aggression. “As India grows stronger economically, protecting our banking system from cybercriminals and cyberterrorists becomes equally essential,” he said, according to a report by Pragativadi.
The Prime Minister added that “wars are no longer fought with weapons alone” and that a country could also be weakened by attacking its economy. His remarks placed the new RBI facilities within the wider challenge of protecting banking and payment systems as financial services become increasingly dependent on digital networks.
The Bhubaneswar centre combines a Data Centre with a Cybersecurity Training Institute. The report did not provide details of the facility’s operational capacity, staffing, technology systems or the specific institutions that will use the training infrastructure. It said the facilities were designed to bolster the security and computing capability of the nation’s financial network.
Modi also referred to the expansion of India’s banking ecosystem and cited nearly 60 crore Jan Dhan accounts as an example of the scale of the country’s digitally connected financial system. He said these accounts had enabled direct benefit transfers to citizens without leakage.
Referring to a frequently cited example of losses in welfare transfers, the Prime Minister said that while a former prime minister had once stated that only 15 paise reached citizens when ₹1 was sent from Delhi, the entire ₹1 now reaches the intended beneficiary’s bank account. The statement linked the growth of digital banking and direct transfers with the need to secure the systems through which public funds and citizen transactions move.
The inauguration also formed part of the Centre’s broader positioning of eastern India as an economic growth region. Modi said Odisha’s development was increasingly being driven by technology alongside its traditional mineral wealth. The report did not specify whether the new RBI complex would support financial institutions beyond the central bank’s own systems or identify a separate implementation timeline for its cybersecurity training programmes.
The opening of the facility gives Bhubaneswar a new role in the institutional infrastructure supporting financial cybersecurity. Further details on its operations, training programmes and integration with India’s banking network will determine how the centre contributes to the protection of digital financial services.
