NASSCOM kick-starts Digital Literacy Week as part of NDLM

With a target to bring digital literacy to over one lakh Indians, the NASSCOM Foundation has launched the Digital Literacy Week. This initiative, a part of the National Digital Literacy Mission (NDLM), will complement the government’s vision to empower at least one person per household with critical digital literacy skills by 2020.

The National Digital Literacy Mission is a far-sighted, dynamic and integrated platform of digital literacy awareness, education and capacity programmes that will help rural and the underserved communities fully participate in the global digital economy. The NASSCOM Foundation is the industry partner to the Government of India to accomplish the first phase goal for NDLM or “DISHA” by making 10 lakh individuals in India digitally literate in 18 months. This programme is expected to touch the lives of more than 250 million individuals over the next few years and aims at helping citizens adapt to the increasingly digital world.

According to Dr Ganesh Natarajan, Chairman, NASSCOM Foundation, “The three Rs of education, namely Reading, (W)Riting and (A)Rithmetic which were all the rage in the 60s are now passé. They have to be joined by a fourth pillar, namely Digital Literacy to function in this technology-driven world. The NASSCOM Foundation has been focussing on making technology central to enabling change and the Digital Literacy Week is a great way to unite the volunteering strength of the industry and create a nationwide Digital Literacy impact.”   

The content for making a lakh Indians digitally literate comes in seven modules and is presently teachable in Hindi, English, Telugu and Kannada. The seven modules are Power in Your Hands, Internet, Email and Social Media, Useful Information, Government, E-commerce, and IT Security. Everyone going through these seven modules will be digitally empowered at the end of the course after passing an assessment conducted by NIELIT (National Institute of Electronics and Information Technology).