The Government of India aims to launch a mission that will provide digital literacy to about six crore rural households. While announcing the Union Budget for 2016-17, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said, “We now plan to launch the digital literacy mission scheme for rural India to cover around 6 crore additional households in the next three years, details of the scheme will be spelt out separately. We need to spread digital literacy in rural areas. Of the 16.8 crore rural households, as many as 12 crore households do not have computers and are unlikely to have digitally literate people.”
The government has already approved schemes to promote digital literacy in rural areas. One is called the National Digital Literacy Mission and the other is Digital Saksharta Abhiyan. Back in 2014, Intel launched a new initiative called ‘Digital Skills for India’, and its aim was to empower people with locally relevant tools and services. As part of the initiative, the company introduced the Digital Skills Training Application that’s comprised of modules on digital literacy, financial inclusion, health care and cleanliness in five languages.