CHENNAI: Booking e-tickets for a railway journey and paying the electricity bill with the click of a button — these advantages available to the digitally literate remain elusive for others.
As a step to bridge help this large section of the Indian society with low or no technological knowledge, a Digital Literacy Programme is to be launched to train people in basic use of technology.
The Information and Communiations Technology Academy of Tamil Nadu (ICTACT), an autonomous organisation, has been working on an industry-institute collaboration to empower people through technology. In this initiative, ICTACT will collaborate with around 250 colleges in both rural and urban areas of Tamil Nadu, and 100 people in each location will be trained in digital literacy.
The 100 people will be from the general public, which could include non-teaching and support staff of the college like cleaners, and people from neighbourhood.
“We want to target people with no technological knowledge,” said B Anbuthambi, vice-president, Educational Initiatives ICTACT.
Around 95 per cent of these colleges are in rural areas, and the college will provide the infrastructure and faculty for the training. “The nation’s vision is to touch four million lives in the next four years through digital literacy skills. ICTACT’s digital pledge will be a collaboration between institutions and corporates to help in this mission of making one person in every household digitally literate,” said Lakshmi Narayanan, chairman, ICTACT.
The ICTACT Bridge Conference was started in 2011 to bring about industry-institute interaction. This year’s conference will take place on February 17 at the Chennai Trade Centre with the theme of The Big Digital World, where industry experts, leaders of educational institutions and stakeholders will together take this theme forward.