ANALYSIS ON PMGDISHA

 BY KAVYA KHARBANDA
(22BC586)

The contemporary era of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has

impacted human lives in many ways by providing improved service delivery, increased
job and learning opportunities, and enhanced knowledge and skills. At the same time,
differential access to Information Technology (IT) and its usage has fuelled a digital
divide in society, creating huge gaps between the haves and the have-nots. In India, the
digital divide between the privileged urban populations and the under-privileged rural
populations is widely visible. In order to bridge this gap, the Government of India has
initiated the Pradhan Mantri Gramin Digital Saksharta Abhiyan (PMGDISHA), a Digital
Literacy programme to enhance the digital skills of the rural masses of the country.
The Government of India initiated the Pradhan Mantri Gramin Digital Saksharta Abhiyan
(PMGDISHA) in February 2017 to bridge the digital divide in the rural areas of the
country. The objective of this scheme was to make digital and IT training accessible to
up to 40 per cent of the rural households by covering at least one digitally illiterate
person from every eligible household. The mandate of the programme was to achieve
the targets by 31st March 2019. However, the scheme has been extended for another
year, till 31st March 2020. The scheme is being implemented by the CSC e-Governance
Services India Limited, the Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) of the Ministry of Electronics
and Information Technology (MeitY). In view of the coverage of a substantial proportion
of the trainees under the scheme, the Council for Social Development (CSD) was
entrusted with the task of evaluating the impact of the digital literacy training imparted
under PMGDISHA.
Objectives are coverage of the targeted beneficiaries, assess the training content and
its compatibility, examine the resourcefulness of the training infrastructure and the
quality of training centres and its trainers, analyse the impact of the training outcome
on the beneficiaries& suggesting possible measures for improving the implementation
of the programme to guarantee better outcomes in future modules.
PMGDISHA beneficiary coverage includes rural households, women, SCs, STs, BPL
cardholders, digitally illiterate school/college students, non-smartphone users,
coverage of BPL/Antyodaya Card-holders, coverage of one person per family, and a
well equipped training centre with requisite facilities such as computers, good internet
connectivity and power-backups.
The survey data for the PMGDISHA assessment study, which was provided to CSD by
CSC-SPV, consists of the beneficiary details of 27 states and one union territory (UT).
This data set included the basic details of each of the beneficiaries such as name,
mobile number, place of residence, community, gender, ration card details, and email
id. The raw data thus supplied was scrutinised on the basis of the mobile numbers of
the trainees, as the method of survey adopted for this exercise was a telephonic
survey. After scrutiny, the data in which mobile numbers were missing, or which had
repeated mobile numbers and invalid mobile numbers (numbers with less or more
than 10 digits) were removed and only the valid data set were considered for the
survey.
OVERALL PERFORMANCE OF PMGDISHA:
 Beneficiary Coverage 0.36
 Training Process and Delivery 0.57
 Training Outcome 0.53
DIGITAL LITERACY INDEX: OVERALL PERFORMANCE 0.48(which is not even 50%)
PMGDISHA is lagging due to poor performance of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Bihar, Rajasthan,
West Bengal, etc. Data also signifies decrease from registered candidates to trained
and certified candidates. The success of PMGDISHA depends on massive participation
and a long path vision to achieve 100%DIGITAL INDIA – POWER TO EMPOWER which is
achieving through e-governance, UMANGapp, BHIM, UPI, e-health checkups, online
(moocs) classes ,Fastag services, Aarogya Setu etc.
India is also in a path of becoming 2nd electronic manufacturing unit as per Shri Ravi
Shankar Prasad and in a path of self reliant India a vision seen by Mahatma Gandhi
during independence.