Digital Literacy to get Promoted through New App launched by Telecom Minister

Ravi Sankar Prasad, the telecom minister of India launched a new mobile app named ‘DISHA’ in Bihar recently. The app would promote digital literacy in Bihar and would be used to educate the tribal and Dalit women in the region.

While felicitating the 10 Dalit women who have undergone training under the Digital Saksharta Abhiyan held in Bodh Gaya (Bihar) the minister launched the app. Along with the app there was a DISHA handbook that got released as well. The handbook contains pictorial lessons on computers to make it easy for people to understand. Through self-learning modules available in the app it would help spreading the digital literacy among the people of the rural and semi urban areas of the state. The handbook for DISHA has been prepared by the Common Service Centres (CSCs), so that digital literacy could get spread in nooks and corners of the state. Any person with very little or no digital literacy can learn something from this handbook which would be very helpful in running the app as well.

The training of the Dalit women get conducted in partnership with Intel which works with the Common Service Centres (CSCs) to make digital literacy a possibility in India and people aware of the possibilities of it. Intel has been training Dalit women for long now and have already trained almost 200 of them. The aim of Intel is to train over 500 Dalit women in Bihar, who in turn can make many others literate digitally.

Digital Saksharta Abhiyan (DISHA) was launched on 21 August, 2014 in order to provide digital literacy to non IT- literate persons. According to the scheme there are 52.5 lakh people including Anganwadi and ASHA workers and authorized ration dealers around the nation are provided with IT training.