Under the National Digital literacy Mission (NDlM), a project run by Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, every citizen of India can learn to access the computer and secondary digital devices like tablet, smartphones, fablet and laptops. Dinesh Tyagi, CEO, Community Service Centers (CSCs) e-governance services of India, has said that considering the magnitude of regional languages in India, the department has converted eight languages and will convert more with the help of translators.
“Our prime target is rural population but regional language is barrier for us. With the help of local teachers, we are trying to overcome this problem, soon syllabus will be available in all major regional languages,” Tyagi says.
According to him, to become digital literate, the applicant isn’t required to be highly educated. “Interestingly, we’re getting overwhelmingly response from uneducated people, they want to learn how to access Facebook, Whatsapp and Gmail,” he added.
Mission NDlM was started in March 2014 and it has envisioned a target of training 10 lakh persons. “Our main aim is to cover one person from every eligible family to be made digitally literate so that he/she can access information technology related applications,” Tyagi said.
NDlM also known as Digital Sakhsharta Abhiyaan, was approved in December 2014 with a target to train an additional 42.5 lakh candidates in digital literacy in four years. “Both these schemes so far have a cumulative enrollment of more than 50 lakh candidates. Out of these approximately, lakh candidates have got certified by NDlM,” Tyagi says.
Presently there are 1.4 lakh CSCs across the country. They are delivering a Business to Consumer (B2C) services to citizens. Under the National e- governance scheme, CSC is operated and managed by village level entrepreneur who belongs to the same village and have basic computing infrastructure along with Internet. Presently CSCs are delivering Government to citizen and B2C services like education, eKYC, election, insurance, land records, UID, passport etc.