DIGITAL SERVICES IN

EDUCATION
PM eVIDYA programme
• Realizing the importance of digital education and its ability to ensure continuity of school
education even in extraordinary situations like the COVID-19 pandemic, PM eVIDYA was launched
on May 17, 2020 for multimode access to digital/online education.
• As a comprehensive initiative, PM eVIDYA envisions to unify all efforts related to digital/online/on-
air education, benefitting nearly 25 crore school going children across the country.
• The programme envisages development of special e-content for visually and hearing impaired
students, along with extensive use of radio, community radio and podcasts and the uploading of QR
coded energized digital textbooks for Classes 1 to 12 on DIKSHA portal.
DIKSHA
• DIKSHA (Digital Infrastructure for Knowledge Sharing), a national platform for school
education, was launched in September 2017. It has been adopted by 35 states/UTs across India.
• The platform offers teachers, students and parents engaging learning material relevant to the
prescribed school curriculum. Teachers have access to learning aids like lesson plans, worksheets
and activities, to create enjoyable classroom experiences.
• Students will be able to understand concepts, revise lessons and do practice exercises. Parents
can follow classroom activities and clear doubts outside school hours.
• It currently supports more than 18 languages.
• Amid the pandemic, the portal has been widely used by students to access digital textbooks and
other material from home. The QR codes placed in textbooks provide a ready gateway for any
new/modified content to be uploaded on DIKSHA.

SWAYAM PRABHA
• The SWAYAM PRABHA is a group of 34 DTH channels devoted to telecasting educational
programmes on 24x7 basis.
• Every day, new content is broadcasted for at least four hours, which is repeated five times a day
thereafter, allowing the students to choose the time of their convenience. The content is provided
by National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL), IITs, UGC, CEC, IGNOU,
NCERT and NIOS.
SWAYAM
• Under the Digital India initiative, National Institute of
Open Schooling (NIOS) has been identified as one of the
partners for the National MOOC (Massive Open Online
Courses) initiatives for “Study Webs of Active Learning for
Young Aspiring Minds (SWAYAM)”.
• The objective of this effort is to take the best teaching
learning resources to all, including the most disadvantaged.
• The MOOCs are developed using the four-quadrant
approach – text in PDF, a teaching video, self-assessment
exercises and discussion forum. NCERT has launched 34 online
courses for students (Classes XI-XII) and teachers on the
SWAYAM portal.
• ePathshala portal
• • The ePathshala portal and mobile apps are a storehouse
of audios, videos, ePubs, flipbooks etc. Resources can be
accessed through laptop, desktop, tablets and
smartphones. Resources are available in Hindi, English
and Urdu.

• NISHTHA
• • National Initiative for School Heads’ and Teachers’
Holistic Advancement (NISHTHA) is a capacity building
programme for improving the quality of school education
through Integrated Teacher Training.
• • It aims to build competencies among all teachers and
school principals at the elementary stage. Amid
pandemic, teacher training modules have been adapted
for online dissemination and other stages of education.
OLabs
• The OLabs are based on the idea that lab experiments can be taught using the Internet, more
efficiently with fewer expenses. The labs can also be made available to students with no access to physical
labs or where equipment is not available owing to being scarce or costly.
• The content is aligned to NCERT/CBSE and state board syllabus in physics, chemistry, and biology from
Class 9 to Class 12 and English and Maths lessons for Class 9 and 10.
Virtual Labs
• Virtual Labs provide remote-access to labs in various disciplines of science and engineering at the
undergraduate level and post graduate level.
• To provide a complete Learning Management System around the Virtual Labs, the students can avail
the various tools for learning, including additional web-resources, video-lectures, animated
demonstrations and self evaluation.
National Digital Online Library
• National Digital Library of India (NDLI) is a virtual repository of learning resources and provides a
host of services for the learner community. It is sponsored and mentored by the ministry of education
through its National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology
(NMEICT). It has more than 50 million resources.
National Repository of Open Educational Resource
• NROER is a collaborative platform, which brings together everyone interested in school and teacher
education. The project is managed by the Central Institute of Educational Technology, NCERT under
the aegis of department of school education and literacy.
Special e-content for students with disabilities
• NIOS offers content for students with disabilities such as content in Indian sign language for hearing
impaired learners and ePub and DAISY enabled ‘talking books’ for visually impaired learners.
• It is reported that NIOS has developed more than 270 videos in sign language across seven subjects
to provide educational access to learners at secondary level and on yoga courses.
Mukta Vidya Vani (MVV)
• NIOS organises live interactive web streaming of Personal Contact Programmes (PCPs) for
various subjects of secondary, senior secondary and vocational courses.
• These are organised for its learners through Mukta Vidya Vani (MVV), an open education
radio facility for providing informational and educational content.
Shiksha Vaani
• Shiksha Vaani is an audio-based learning initiative of CBSE and is available via Android app
store. The podcasts cover various subjects at the secondary and senior secondary levels and are
available both in English and Hindi
DIGITAL SEVICES IN HEALTH
1. Emergency Response and Health Systems Preparedness Package
“Public Health and Hospitals” being a state subject, the primary responsibility of strengthening public
healthcare system lies with the respective State Governments. However, under National Health Mission
(NHM), technical and financial support is provided to the States/UTs to strengthen the public healthcare
system at public healthcare facilities.
2. Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB PM-JAY)
Launched on 23rd September 2018, Ayushman Bharat PM-JAY is the largest Government funded health
assurance/insurance scheme in the world. PM-JAY is a centrally sponsored scheme. It is entirely funded by
Government and the funding is shared between Centre and States as per prevailing guidelines of Ministry of
Finance. PM-JAY is an entitlement-based scheme. The households included are based on the deprivation and
occupational criteria of Socio-Economic Caste Census 2011 (SECC 2011) for rural and urban areas respectively.
Over 10.74 crore poor and vulnerable entitled families (approximately 50 crore beneficiaries) are eligible for
these benefits. However, the beneficiary base under the scheme has been expanded by the 33 States/UTs
implementing AB PM-JAY. In case of expansion of beneficiary base beyond eligible SECC families, States have
to bear the financial burden corresponding to additional families.
3. Pradhan Mantri Swasthya Suraksha Yojana (PMSSY)
→ PMSSY Scheme Announced in 2003 and Launched in 2006
❑ Objective -
• to correct regional imbalances in the availability of tertiary healthcare
services and
• to augment facilities for quality medical education in the country
4. Medical Education
There are three Centrally Sponsored Schemes under Medical Education, namely,
1) Establishment of new Medical Colleges attached with existing district/referral
hospitals,
2) Upgradation of existing State Government/Central Government medical
colleges to increase MBBS seats in the country and
3) Strengthening and upgradation of State Government Medical colleges for
starting new PG disciplines and increasing PG seats.

5. Efforts of Ministry of AYUSH

The rapid growth of the AYUSH Sector, scientific cultivation of medicinal plants,
expansion of AYUSH Education and health infrastructure, Skill upgradation and
global acceptance of Yoga and Ayurveda have opened up new opportunities for
revenue and employment. As estimated by IMARC (2021), the Ayurveda market
is expected to grow by around 15 per cent during 2020-2025.
 SECURITY INITIATIVES BY GOVERNMENT

The Centre offers the following security and protective tools:[6]

1.“USB Pratirodh”, was also launched by the government which, Union IT and Electronics Minister Ravi
Shankar Prasad states is aimed at controlling the unauthorised usage of removable USB storage media
devices like pen drives, external hard drives and USB supported mass storage devices.
2.An app called “Samvid” was also introduced. It is a desktop based Application Whitelisting solution for
Windows operating system. It allows only preapproved set of executable files for execution and protects
desktops from suspicious applications from running.
3.M-Kavach, a device for security of Android mobile devices has also been developed.[7] It provides protection
against issues related to malware that steal personal data & credentials, misuse Wi-Fi and Bluetooth
resources, lost or stolen mobile device, spam SMSs, premium-rate SMS and unwanted / unsolicited incoming
calls.
4.Browser JSGuard, is a tool which serves as a browser extension which detects and defends malicious HTML &
JavaScript attacks made through the web browser based on Heuristics. It alerts the user when he visits
malicious web pages and provides a detailed analysis threat report of the web page.
T h a n k y o u