Bharat SainiLast Updated on July 22, 2016 by Bharat Saini
In India, in the past six years, national enrollment ratio in schools has reached 96% for students of age 6-14 and duly approve the Right to Education scheme of the government. Also, there have been several efforts to provide facilities to the students and support them in achieving education. With the advancement in technologies, the government has now set up another agenda for Digital India. Even when the country has one of the biggest IT sectors in the world, it lags behind in providing digital education. Internet has become a technology that can connect the whole world and in India it has great potentials by providing various services to its people. Internet can help people connect to educational services, healthcare services, financial education and many more technologies that is otherwise thought to be expensive in terms of reach and access.
Having been worked in the field of education, I believe that digital literacy is one of the advancements that India is lacking in. A large population of country’s youth is still devoid of internet connectivity and this leads them to a world which is hundred years backward. In India, there are 6,50,000 villages and in those villages, digital illiteracy is close to 90%. Even when literacy rate has gained momentum in last few years, there have been little growth in digital advancements in country’s villages. Digital literacy programs are crucial to make India one of the super powers of the world. Penetration of internet to even remote areas of the country is going to be a big support to the cause.
Digital literacy opens several gates for career options for the youth in India. Having knowledge of computer can bring vast opportunities which can be explored. Digital literacy does not only help the country to grow but is a strong medium to eradicate unemployment. At the current time, all the sectors of occupations have received technological advancements which has given rise to the use of digital mediums and with the use of computers and digital mediums, there is an increase in number of jobs with these sectors. I happened to visit one of the government schools in a distant village. To my surprise, government had provided funds for computer labs and those labs were actually built in the school. To add that, government had started hiring computer teachers for the school, some for students and other for giving skills to teachers and lecturers.
In an effort to take insights on the matter from an expert, online counselling platform CareerGuide. was asked, if they see digital advancement as a medium of increasing jobs or killing employment opportunities with the use of human less technology. Her answer was totally surprising. She said like a teacher’s job never get killed when he/she teaches students, rather the number of jobs keep increasing. Similarly, digital advancements in the country opens up hundreds of job sectors which never existed before. This has been true till date, many jobs in the field of technology have evolved in last five years only and this has made it more necessary to achieve digital literacy.
