Chhattisgarh Government is empowering women of the State via the SKY Scheme – the first of its kind which is the world’s largest such programme, officials informed.
Women who are aware, educated, and financially aware and independent are empowered women, and a smartphone provides many avenues to achieve this, they informed.
One of the primary goals of the SKY Scheme is to empower women and help close gender disparities by providing women access to information and services through smartphones.
Providing smart phones to women in every rural family and every urban poor household is going to make a dramatic difference to bridging the gender divide. This is the first programme of this kind anywhere in the world, officials informed.
India is the second largest market in the world for mobile phones and is one of the primary drivers for mobile subscriptions growth worldwide . However, the numbers are heavily skewed in favour of men, they informed.
Additionally, Indian women lag behind in areas such as labour markets, access to banking, and physical mobility. Ironically, mobile phones are tremendously empowering devices, which provide access to information, access to markets and access to financial services. Mobile phones thus have a huge potential to reduce these gender disparities.
However, the stark reality is that Indian women are 34.5 percentage points less likely to own a phone than men (FII, 2016). Phone costs and technical literacy keep more women than men from using mobile phones. Handsets, especially for smartphones, are often too costly for women, officials informed.
Research shows that mobile technology can help close gender disparities by providing access to better opportunities to women. Smartphones can help bridge the literacy, education and skill gap by providing access to online courses through MOOCs, which have the benefit of access to educational content anytime, anywhere, in flexible self-paced modules, they said.
Smartphones can help in providing women a level playing field in terms of getting access to the livelihood and job opportunities available. There are many platforms and mobile apps that provide this information. NRlM’s Bihan app in Chhattisgarh, provides a platform for small women entrepreneurs to upload the pictures of handicraft poducts and artwork that they have created, after which NRlM helps them market these products.
There are apps like Chhattisgarh Rojgar Samachar that provide information about open government jobs in the state. There are other privately owned job platforms where users can view job openings matched by skills of the user for e.g. a carpenter can search for jobs specific to carpentry.
Women can also use the smartphone to access information and gain awareness on health issues and best practices. Thus smartphones can enable women to take better care of their own health as well as the health of their families.
Today, access to banking is no longer as big a challenge as it used to be a few years ago. Banking is now available at our fingertips with the advent of m-banking. There are plenty of apps that help in raising awareness and improving financial literacy. One can even open and operate bank accounts with the help of their phones. There are apps available that educate users about microfinance and other types of loans, and also help them apply for these loans.
Thus smartphones also help in improving financial literacy and inclusion. M-PESA [2] is a mobile phone-based money transfer service launched in 2007 in Kenya. Access to the Kenyan mobile money system M-PESA increased per capita consumption levels and lifted 194,000 households, or 2% of Kenyan households, out of poverty, officials informed.
Moreover, the impacts, which are more pronounced for female-headed households, appear to be driven by changes in financial behaviour—increased financial resilience and saving—and labour market outcomes, such as occupational choice, especially for women, who moved out of agriculture and into business. Mobile money has therefore increased the efficiency of the allocation of consumption over time while allowing a more efficient allocation of labour, resulting in a meaningful reduction of poverty in Kenya. If more women had access to smartphones in India, perhaps we could see such a revolution here too.
The Chhattisgarh Government's preliminary assessment, indicates that urban areas, approximately 14,000 villages will come under network connectivity and approximately 50.8 lakh Smartphones will be distributed under its CG-SKY scheme, officials informed.
As per the above categorization, the Government plans to initiate the Smartphone distribution by April 2018 and complete 100% Smartphone distribution by the end of March 2019, officials informed.
For ease of distribution and in order to ensure effective implementation, the distribution period has been divided into two stages with the first such stage witnessing distribution of approximately 48 lakh Smartphones by end of August 2018 and the second stage witnessing distribution of the remaining approximately 2,80 lakh Smartphones by end of March 2019.
The scheme would cover all villages and towns in the State of Chhattisgarh, except those villages having less than 1,000 population and not having connectivity. It may be noted that villages with less than 1,000 population, but having connectivity shall be considered for the CG-SKY, officials informed.
All Urban poor households in the state of Chhattisgarh as identified by the concerned department are to be covered under the scheme.
College Students in the state of Chhattisgarh as identified by concerned departments to the tune of approx. 5 lakh are to be covered under the scheme.
Under this scheme, one Smartphone is to be distributed to each beneficiary household and eligible College Student. The distribution will need to be done through an event/ distribution camp being organized by the State Government at each Distribution Centre (GP/ Ward/ College), officials informed.
The e-KYC/ KYC of the proposed beneficiaries needs to be done at the Distribution Centres and Smartphones/ SIM cards must be distributed only after completion of e-KYC/ KYC.
The Government has taken a leap forward to design the Sanchar Kranti Yojna (CG-SKY) for providing a solution to improve the telecom connectivity in the state of Chhattisgarh by incentivizing the telecom operators to install Cell-Sites, they informed.
The primary objective is to ensure the mobile network connectivity is extended to all villages in state of Chhattisgarh with a population of 1000 or above as per the 2011 census and to further strengthen network coverage in all towns and villages, which already have coverage by either erecting new telecom towers or upgradation of existing towers