Kerala becomes India’s first State to achieve 100% digital literacy

With 21.87 lakh people across Kerala completing the State government’s Digi Kerala digital literacy programme, Kerala has become the first State in India to achieve total digital literacy. Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan made the official declaration on 21 August.

- BY S VENKAT NARAYAN

In a grassroots-level movement, akin to the landmark total literacy campaign of the late 1980s, the State utilised its strong local self-government mechanism to the hilt to bridge the digital divide.

The story begins in 2021 at Pullampara, a hilly rural region located approximately 25 km from Thiruvananthapuram, the State capital. A group of government officials, native to Pullampara, began noticing long queues regularly in front of one of the few banks in the panchayat. Many of them were MGNREGS (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme) labourers who had travelled long distances just to check their account balance.

Sajina Sathar, then a District Women’s Welfare Officer, and an Assistant Director in the Local Self-Government department, at present, says that the travails of those who kept aside their daily work for something as simple as an account balance check kindled a thought about teaching them to use the basic digital technology required in daily life.

Thus was born the project ‘Digi Pullampara,’ the precursor to Digi Kerala.

The plans to impart digital literacy to all residents of the panchayat began in August 2021, under a five-member core team, led by panchayat President P.V. Rajesh. The team had Sajina, MGNREGS District Engineer Dinesh Pappen, and S. Sanob, a trainee of the Kerala Administrative Service, and a Technical Education Department Employee Shamnad Pullampara, as its members.

A survey was soon carried out across all wards to identify those who are digitally illiterate. Out of 3,917 people thus identified, training was provided to 3,300 as the rest were bedridden.