GID:10041

DIGITAL LITERACY
Contents
Introduction: .......................................................................................................... 1
The purpose of this programme ............................................................................ 3
Reach:.................................................................................................................... 3
Approach and Process ........................................................................................... 4
Internet Saathi Selection: ................................................................................... 5
Internet Saathi Capacity Building Programme: ................................................. 6
Orientation to Rural Women on Internet use: ................................................... 7
Beneficiary Profile: ............................................................................................ 9
Programme Output: ............................................................................................... 9
IMPACT.............................................................................................................. 10
Major Challenges: ............................................................................................... 11
Possible Solutions Explored: .............................................................................. 11
Conclusion: ......................................................................................................... 12
Niladri B Sahoo
State Coordinator, CYSD

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Introduction:
The contemporary era of Information and Communication Technology has been instrumental
in transforming human lives in ways that one cannot possibly deny or overlook. This is the
most wonderful gift of electronics and communication science during the last century. This
has been recognized as the engine for growth and development in the fastest growing states
like Odisha. Nowadays, the internet use and digital literacy is playing an instrumental role in
bridging the information gap. Integration of digital literacy in rural development interventions
has speed up the development process and filled-in the gaps between the educationally and
technologically deprived and the prosperous in society.

Digital literacy has been critical in the 21st century. Becoming ‘tech-savvy’ took off in the
early 2000s, but after the commencement of the National Digital Literacy Mission (NDLM)

in 2014, digitisation and digital literacy became a rapidly expanding focus.The Government
of India launched the ‘Digital India’ campaign for transforming India into a digitally
empowered society and economy. One of the goals of this campaign is to empower those who
are IT-illiterate so that they are competent enough to use IT and related applications for
effectively participating in the democratic processes and enhancing their livelihood
opportunities.

 The Digital India program was launched by the Government in July 2015. The main
aim of the program was to ensure that government’s services are made available to
the citizens electronically by improved online infrastructure, internet connectivity and
universal digital literacy for digital empowerment of people.
 Under the Digital India mission, PMGDISHA was launched which refers to Pradhan
Mantri Gramin Digital Saksharta Abhiyan, launched in October, 2017. The objective
was to make six crore persons in rural areas digitally literate across States/UTs by
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 reaching around 40 percent rural households and covering at least one member from
every eligible household by 31st March, 2019.
 Recently, the Government has also started the National Digital Literacy Mission,
which by the end of 2020 aims to impart crucial digital literacy skills to at least one
member of the 147 million rural households in India and make them technologically
empowered.

However, despite many such ICT related programs, the trickle-down effect of all such
initiatives to the marginalized sections of society continues to be a challenging task.

Bridging the digital divide through Internet Saathi:

Millions of people are using the internet services but it is a fact that many are still not using
the services due to economic and social barrier. The ‘have’ and ‘have not’—these
perspectives are also there in internet world. Thus, this resulted in the digital divide. It is
realised that only one third of Indian online users are women indicating biggest gender
disparity in which under the category of the rural users of Internet, only 12% women uses
Internet. The growth rate of women Internet users in India is only 27%, and only ONE in
every TEN women is aware about Internet.
Foundation for Rural Entrepreneurship Development (FREND), a foundation promoted by
Tata Trusts and supported by Google, worked as a vehicle for promoting digital literacy in
the rural India through the power of the digitally-enabled women network for socio-
economic and cultural development.
The CYSD-FREND collaborated Smart-phone-internet-literacymodel supported the
connection of an additional 1.6
million rural women to the mobile
internet. The programme which
started from June 2019, was
committed to increase interest and
usage of the Internet among women
in rural areas.
Internet Saathi, an initiative, which
not-only created a cadre of digitally
empowered women leader but also worked with the digitally-illiterate population to impart
a certain level of digital learning. Digital literacy orientation and learning sessions only for
women were a major challenge in the rural community, however, that did not discourage
the Saathis from imparting training millions of women. Through this initiative CYSD has
reached to 1.6 million rural women benefited in six districts of Odisha.

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 The purpose of this programme
 To create a cadre of digitally-trained women leaders in rural communities who train
other women, thereby building a growing network of barefoot digital leaders who
empower digital literacy in rural Odisha thus bridging the digital divide.
 To reach as many rural women as possible in selected 6 districts with Internet
literacy and to educate rural women about Internet, tools to use it and benefits that
how life can be changed if they use Internet.
Reach:
The CYSD-FREND Internet Saathi reached 16 lakh+rural women in 6 months and covered
8043 villages spread over in 79 Blocks of 6 districts- Puri, Cuttack, Jajpur, Khurda,
Keonjhar and Mayurbhanj. It is learnt that there are around 11500+ villages in these six
districts and CYSD reached around 70% of those villages in 6 months. The programme,
developed 2286 local women as master trainers (Internet Saathis) to train millions of rural
women on how to use the internet, which in turn helped them improve their income and
overall quality of life.

District Name No. of Blocks No. of Villages Total no. of Saathis Responses Expected
Cuttack 13 1278 361 252700
Puri 12 1164 353 247100
Khurda 10 1004 264 184800
Mayurbhanj 22 2357 685 479500
Keonjhar 10 1136 323 226100
Jajpur 10 1104 300 210000
Total 77 8043 2286 1600200

The CYSD led Internet Saathi programme has reached to more than 1.6 million rural women.
However, the dashboard captured the complete details of 1600200 rural women as the project
participants. Each Saathi had to train 700 rural women within the age group of 14 to 60 within
their alloted cluster. Out of total villages of 13142, the programme has a reach of 8043 numbers of
villages covering more than 1.6 million rural women.

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District Total village Village reached
Puri 1722 1278
Khordha 1562 1164
Cuttack 1962 1004
Jajpur 1794 2357
Keonjhar 2132 1136
Mayurbhanj 3970 1104
Total 13142 8043

Approach and Process

The architecture of the Internet Saathi programme depicts the excellence management of an
intervention through a sequence of inter- related tiers. ‘Internet Saathi’ is an approach for
rural women empowerment - started in a thought of transforming knowledge from the
digitally empowered women to rural women. Thisis the social computing and informatics
implementation initiative by CYSD and FEREND to improve internet base among the
women in rural Odisha.This had also enabled opening up avenues of economic opportunity
for the rural women.
The programme was executed with rigorous planning and time-bound manner. The
programme involved active engagement and monitoring of approximately 2400 human
resources at village-Block-District and State levels. The entire process involved several
Orientation Programmes for potential women leaders – our Saathis through 79 capacity
building training sessions and review meetings, and a continuous mentoring mechanism
through WhatsApp real-time location application, hang-out calls, emails and regular field
visits.
The programme envisaged the following process for execution:
 Selection and deployment of the Block coordinators and District coordinators
 Identification of potential women to be transformed as Saathis
 Two-day in-person Training of Trainers - capacity building programme for the
selected Saathis
 Assessment and mapping of commitment, competence and interest level the trainees
 Final selection of 2286 Saathis and distribution of 2 internet enabled android smart
phone to each Saathi.
 Each Saathi allocated about 3 to 4 villages covering 700 households to reach in 5
months.
Soon after the deployment of 77 Block Coordinators and 6 District Coordinators a three-day
orientation for the team helped them understand the greater objectives of the programme
and the process to be followed during the implementation phase. The orientation

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programme included the selection and clustering of villages, code generation of the villages
and
population analysis. During the orientation, the cluster maps were also developed to create
cluster-fencing for the Internet Saathis. The very next step after the orientation programme
was to select potential candidates as Internet Saathis and do a ground analysis of Census
database (2011) with the field.
The found mismatches were
again shorted out by including
new villages by generating and
adding new village revenue
codes. More than 2000 new
revenue village codes were
generated and added to the
database. The Saathi selection
was done at the ground level by
the Block Coordinators keeping consideration of the pre-defined selection criteria like age,
qualification, geographical location, interest and knowledge on Smart Phone usage .

Internet Saathi Selection:

The criteria for the selection of the Saathis required the individual to be from the locality, at
least completed matriculation (Std X) with basic knowledge on Smartphone operation. The

Age SHG
Age
Saathi Group Un-- th Member
Group Married (10 ) (+2) (+3)
Count 18 to married
26-40
District 25
Mayurbhanj 685 482 203 437 248 332 194 159 623
Puri 353 197 156 253 100 143 121 89 312
Cuttack 361 203 158 231 130 152 123 86 305
Jajpur 300 202 98 163 137 65 156 79 278
Keonjhar 323 232 91 176 147 165 126 32 301
Khurda 264 187 77 143 121 123 63 78 243
Total 2286 1503 783 1403 883 980 783 523 2062
Saathi selection was done after the deployment of then Block Coordinators and District
Coordinators. The selection basically done from the village level discussions through
involvement of local leaders, Block officers, SHG members, CDPO and local people. After,
a rigorous field level exercise, 2286 Saathis were selected for driving the programme
ahead.Out of the total 2286 Saathis selected, most of theSaathi had mobile phones in their
families however, their access to use it was a challenge for them. Majority of the selected
Saathis were within the age-group of 18 to 25. Out of 2286 Saathis 980 Saathis are
matriculate, 783 found to complete intermediate and the rest 523 are graduates. Out of 2286

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Saathis selected, 2062 Internet Saathis were involved with Self Help Groups (SHGs) which
in turn helped organising training and orientation sessions for the SHG members.
Out of the selected 2286 Saathis, 786 are involved in small enterprise and livelihoods
engagement like tailoring, garment making, arts/ crafts, electronics, beauty-care and agri-
allied sector which includes poultry, vegetable farming, oil extraction, dairy farming etc.

Livelihoods engagement of
Sl no Number of Saathis
Livelihoods sector Saathis Food
Processing Tailoring /
1 Tailoring / Garment 227 24% Garment
2 29%
Agri-Allied 152
3 Art/Crafts 112 Beauty &
Agri-Allied
Wellness
4 Electronics 43 8% 19%
5 Beauty & Wellness 66 Electronics
6 Food Processing 186 6% Art/Crafts
14%
TOTAL 786

Internet Saathi Capacity Building Programme:

After the assortment of the Saathis, they were given proper training in their own local
language. They were trained on how to use smart phones and internet with the motive that
they will impart their knowledge to the beneficiaries through 79 two-days capacity building
training programmes. A total of 2286 Saathis have been trained. Each Saathi is provided
with two smart phones enabled with two sim cards, one umbrella, one bag and a user
manual.
#Saathis
The capacity building Sl.No State District #Trainings
Trained
training sessions 1 Mayurbhanj 685 22
basically included a brief 2 Puri 353 12
3 Cuttack 361 14
orientation on the Odisha
4 Jajpur 300 10
Internet Saathi 5 Keonjhar 323 10
programme, concept, 6 Khurda 264 11
Smart phone operation, Total:- 2286 79
using different websites like YouTube, Google, Government sites etc., Internet Saathi role,
hands-on practice with Saathi App and Communication skills. The overall agenda of the
training programmes was to enable the Internet Saathis ‘smart phone friendly’, making
them digitally empowered and build their capacity to disseminate their learning to the rural
women in their respective clusters as well as orient them about the benefits of internet and
how the internet can be used for livelihoods enhancement .

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A participant-centred approach was used for the training. Facilitators from ILFS conducted
the training programmes assisted by the Block Coordinators and District Coordinators.
Mentoring support from CYSD State office and FREND team encouraged the facilitators
and organisers design the trainings in a better way. The day-long sessions included group-
learning sessions which developed inter-knowledge sharing and team work culture.

After the completion of their training, Saathis were provided with User Ids and Passwords
to have access to the mobile application of Internet Saathi which enabled them to collect
data in real time. The profiles of Internet Saathis are stored in the application for further
livelihoods assessment. The application is functional in regional languages and the Internet
Saathis can easily collect information with minimum or no-internet connectivity

Orientation to Rural Women on Internet use:

In most developing states including Odisha, women perform the triple roles of reproduction
and household, production, and community participation work. They struggle to fulfill their
Practical Gender Needs (food, freshwater, fuel, fodder& fiber) and in process their Strategic
Gender Needs of education, skill development, income generation, decision making &
leadership get thoroughly neglected. Despite putting in long hours of work within and
outside the home, women are given a secondary status within the household and the
workplace due to traditional patriarchal norms. Besides women have much lower literacy
level as well as digital literacy rates as compared to men and are excluded from the process
of development and get marginalized by the family and society. One of the reasons for such
incidence is their exclusion from technology and technological processes.
To address the gender digital divide, the CYSD-Internet Saathiprogramme included only
rural women within the age group of 14 to 60 and empowered them digitally. Out of the
entire female population of 6249525 in the six districts, our Internet Saathis trained
1600200 rural women in these six districts. The major thrust of the literacy-process was to
orient on basic mobile operation and internet education.

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 Total female Rural Females
(0 year reached (14 to
District onward) 60)
Puri 833350 247100
Khordha 1084536 184800
Cuttack 1271710 254100
Jajpur 9,01,158 210000
Keonjhar 895246 226100
Mayurbhanj 12,63,525 478100
Total 6249525 1600200

While orienting smart-phone and internet use to the rural women, theSaathis had to do an assessment
at the end of the training. The assessment is done online with a Smart-Form seeded in the Saathi App
which is downloaded from the Google Play Store.
The assessment of the beneficiary training usually captures the following information and answers.
1. Name of the Beneficiary
2. Age
3. Educational Qualification
4. Whether member of SHG or not
5. If member in any SHG, then the name of the SHG
6. After training, if she is able to switch off and, on the phone, or not
7. Ability to lock and unlock the phone
8. Able to change the desired language or not
9. If she is able to move within the main screen and pull down menu option
10. If she is able to switch on the internet on the device (wi-fi and data connection)
11. Ability to open websites/images/videos from the search
12. Able to identify government websites or not
13. Whether, able to download the applications from play-store
14. If she is able to use the camera for pictures and videos
15. Able to locate pictures and videos in the gallery or not
16. Whether she is able to operate calculator (Division/multiplication/subtraction/addition)

The real-time online assessment also had the features of capturing additional information like - the
time taken for orientation and assessment, Geo-coordinates of the place of orientation as well as

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calculate the accuracy level of the beneficiary learning. And at the end the Internet Saathi had to click
and upload the real time photo of the beneficiary to the master database. The Saathi App had also the
facility to reflect the number of village wise beneficiaries covered by the Saathis.

Beneficiary Profile:
Though women’s problems have reduced in magnitude but continue to exist posing a stumbling block
in the state’s development. To bridge the gender gaps and mainstream women in development
processes, the use of digital platform is of paramount importance. The CYSD-FREND digital literacy
prohgramme reached to the rural women within the age group of 14 to 60 majority being from 26 to
40 years of age.
Importantly, while the state Government is more focused for women empowerment and engagement
through SHG movement etc. Out of 1600200 rural women trained through this digital literacy
programme, 970671 are members of SHG groups in their respective villages.

District Total beneficiary SHG member

Puri 247100 170799

Khordha 184800 118879
Cuttack 254100 142933
Jajpur 210000 121735
Keonjhar 226100 124872
Mayurbhanj 478100 291453
Total 1600200 970671

Programme Output:
 The Internet Saathi programme included basic internet education which included the
information gathering on a wide range of subjects and areas like education, e-
shopping, home-remedies, advanced agriculture, early weather forecasts and so on.
 The use of Smart phone and Internet by the rural women added value to the gender
equality and women empowerment. There is a visible social status through enhanced
respect in male society and recognition.
 The rural women could claim their stake with increased knowledge and resource base.
There is a growth in learning ability of the rural women and girls to read news online
and know the world
 Many rural women in Odisha are doing very small business and family-based
business and the programme helped get the updated information on the same for
visible enhancement. Similarly, those who are not in enterprise promotion and are in
education, got knowledge resource from the web.
 The programme helped the rural women to learn cooking, craft making, home decors
and more importantly new designs in garments from the web-applications like
YouTube. As well as learn new skills and trainings to enhance the knowledge to
market their business or handmade products.
 As most of the population in villages is engaged in agriculture, digital literacy was
very helpful tool for them to get information about the demography, natural resources

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 around them, agricultural practices to be employed, seasons and monsoons, market
rates of different commodities, and about government schemes.
 The internet Saathi programmecould provide the opportunity to rural women and girls
for education, financial inclusion, accessing best health services, getting employment,
selling their goods and services etc. and could improve social and financial status of
last mile rural women.

IMPACT
 One of the key achievements of the project has been the extensive outreach across
the villages to mobilise women and young girls to participate in the rural digital
revolution. The project has succeeded in empowering rural women from
marginalized community, low-economic and social backgrounds in areas with low
access of digital tools and its awareness.
 The program has contributed towards bridging the digital gender divide in rural
Odisha and have created a different identity of the Internet Saathis.
 Though the primary focus of the project was to impart digital literacy to women and
girls of the rural communities, more than one lakh men demanded digital literacy
trainings in the districts like Jajpur, Mayurbhanj and Cuttack.
 Some of the women trained under the programme have started their own micro-
business-like stitching, mushroom farming, DTP and photo centre, cookery, crafts
making, e-marketing through Amazon, beauty parlours etc.
 There are also many who are driving awareness for issues like girl child education,
menstrual hygiene and more within their communities.
 This programme has created 2286 women leaders and most of them have been
transformed as entrepreneurs.
 Community people have an increase in accessing the public systems.

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 Major Challenges:
 The programme was designed for 8 months but we got only 6 months for
completion of the target. The first two months were spent for creating clusters,
deriving new codes for new villages and merging with the old census codes,
providing training to Internet Saathi and distribution of device. We got only 4
months to reach the huge target with much difficulties and hurdles.
 Political nosiness and not-so-well cooperation of the public system / mechanism
 Selection and positioning appropriate Saathi at the cluster level and ensuring quality
deliverable from them.
 Mismatch in actual data vs. census data. And confusions in census codes as well as
newly derived village codes by the team.
 Delay in device distribution
 Not so-well-articulated trainers for the Saathi training
 Technical glitches including poor connectivity, delay in service from mobile
manufacturers
 Internet Saathi App for real-time tracking: Real time tracking of BC and DC was
missing in the Saathi App. Also, the Saathi tracking system in the BC app was not
friendly. The Block Coordinators could not keep real-time tracking.
 Google is not inclusive of Odia language

Possible Solutions Explored:

 Influencing at the district heads to ensure the support at each level of the pyramid.
Interfaces with the Government officials were organised to brief the programme
agenda and help bring a clarity among the direct as well as indirect participants at
the district and Block level.
 Shifting of mind-set and prove women as a part of the advance technology eco-
system was a major challenge at the beginning of the programme. To unfold the
myth that women have no use with internet and they don’t need android phones,
concurrent discussions in the village community, working closely with the
representatives from livelihoods mission, SHG federation, helped bring a little
change in the mind-set of the community.
 Connectivity issue was resolved by issuing sim-cards from multiple service
providers. Provision of offline, contents could have been helped. This could have
helped the Saathis demonstrate the curriculum even in the non-network areas.
 Mis-match of actual data vs. census data may was streamlined by doing a ground
level assessment by the Block and District Coordinators before clustering of the
villages. PRI members, Ward members and Panchayat Executive Officers as well as
the Anganwadi, Village committee were included for collecting secondary data.
Instead of State level orientation, District level workshops on coding and village
clustering could have minimised the time and confusion.

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 Conclusion:
The programme was a major success in terms of reach and revoluition that carried in the rural
segments. The project successfully reached to more than 1.6 million rural women through
digital empowerment platform. The initiative of ‘Internet Saathi’ is no doubt very much
important and valuable in many contexts. It is helpful for the improvement in the social
computing and social informatics space. Significantly it is helpful for the improving
information literacy and side by side digital literacy. Odisha is moving towards a fastest
developing state and therefore this improvement in information sector will boost and help in
many ways to become a true Digital State aligning to the Prime Minister’s aim of Digital
Country.
Few-insights
 Although, the programme reaches out millions of rural women, still there is a question
mark to the sustainability, as the data cost is rising day-to-day and the devices are
continued to be difficult to be acquired.
 Digital literacy should be inclusive of the financial literacy package to witness the
nation’s goal of digital-transaction.
 The human capital- the Internet Saathis- created during the programme can be the
barefoot change agents in rural Odisha to create awareness, capacity building, one-
stop information centre and digital financial inclusion.
 Internet Saathi programme is like an entry-point activity, this can be further packaged
and streamlined with various other GO and NGO programmes.
 The digitally empowered and experienced women leaders can be transformed to rural
entrepreneurs and business mentors.

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