How did Kerala pull off digital literacy feat?

The story so far:

On August 21, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan declared Kerala as the first fully digitally literate State in India, marking the completion of the first phase of the ‘Digi Kerala’ digital literacy programme, a grass-root level intervention across all local self-government bodies with an aim to bridge the digital divide. According to the Local Self Government Department, a total of 21.87 lakh people who were identified as “digitally illiterate” in a ground-level survey had successfully completed the training programme as well as cleared the evaluation.

What did they learn to do?

The trainees, who were not previously acquainted with digital devices, were taught to make voice calls as well as video calls using smartphones, to use WhatsApp and other social media platforms. Those who were not too old were also taught to access government services and to carry out digital transactions.

What led the Kerala government to take up the programme?

This is a classic case of bottom up, rather than top down, flow of government programme ideas. The idea originated from the Pullampara panchayat in Thiruvananthapuram in 2021, when some government officials native to Pullampara noticed long queues regularly in front of one of the few banks in the panchayat. Quite a few of those in the queue were daily-wage or MGNREGS labourers who had travelled from the interiors just to check their account balance. The travails of those who had to sacrifice their daily wages for even checking their account balance made the government and panchayat officials think about teaching them to use the basic digital technology required in daily life.

The panchayat soon launched the ‘Digi Pullampara’ project, under which a survey was 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. The core team designed 15 activities in three modules for training.

Students from the National Service Scheme (NSS) units of engineering colleges and schools in the region signed up as volunteers to teach, along with Kudumbashree volunteers, SC/ST promoters, and library council members. MGNREGS worksites and Kudumbashree neighbourhood groups where people come together in considerable numbers became classrooms. Training was also done by volunteers visiting households, and through the younger generation in households with senior citizens. After the training, a different set of volunteers conducted an evaluation of each trainee, with the requirement that they had to complete at least six of the 15 tasks to pass. In Pullampara, 96.18% of the trainees cleared the evaluation. Retraining was provided for those who failed. At an event in September 2022, in which the Chief Minister declared Pullampara as Kerala’s first fully digitally literate panchayat, it was also announced that the programme will be expanded State-wide.

How did the government scale up the Pullampara model of digital literacy across the State?

The government brought the core team from Pullampara to the Kerala Institute of Local Administration to train a group of master trainers, who later trained 2.57 lakh volunteers from across the State. The surveying and training process was thus scaled up without major tweaks and was implemented in a manner similar to the Total Literacy campaign of the late 1980s. In the survey, 1.51 crore people from 83.45 lakh households participated, out of which 21.88 lakh were identified as digitally illiterate. At the State level, the third-party evaluation was carried out by the Economics and Statistics Department, in which 21.87 lakh people passed. In panchayats where over 10% trainees failed the evaluation, re-training was conducted. To questions on whether the State-wide survey has truly covered everyone, the officials argue that local level Kudumbashree workers who accompany the volunteers for the survey helped them avoid the houses in which the residents are already digitally savvy.

As per the National Digital Literacy Mission guidelines for digital literacy, training needs to be provided only for those up to 60 years of age. But the Digi Kerala programme includes people of all ages, even those above the age of 100. According to the department’s data, as many as 15,221 of the trainees were above the age of 90, while 7.77 lakh people were between the ages of 60 and 75 and 1.35 lakh between the ages of 76 and 90. Over 13 lakh women, eight lakh men and 1,644 transgender persons completed the programme successfully, as per the data.

What is the road ahead for the Digi Kerala project?

At the Digi Kerala declaration, the Chief Minister also announced the Digi Kerala 2.0 project, under which awareness classes on cyber fraud, lessons to identify and reject fake news and intensive training to access government services will be held. At the national level, digital literacy is focused on computer literacy, but the Pullampara panchayat as well as the State government shifted the focus to the use of smartphones to navigate daily life. The State government sees it as part of a larger project, which also involves its Kerala Fibre Optic Network (KFON) project aimed at ensuring universal Internet access and narrowing the digital divide by providing Internet free of cost to below the poverty line (BPL) families (14,000 BPL families have been connected till now, in addition to 74,203 commercial home connections) and the K-SMART project to make available all services of local self-government bodies digitally over a uniform platform.