Village near Jamshedpur Hirachuni to turn 100 per cent digital literate

Jamshedpur, Aug. 23: A small village at Hirachuni, under Belajhuri panchayat (near NH-33 stretch between Jamshedpur and Ghatshila) of Jamshedpur block, will soon become 100 percent digital literate in a fortnight.

The village, whose 70 per cent population depends on agriculture while others are contract workers in Jamshedpur, was chosen by the East Singhbhum district administration for becoming digital literate as it has a high literacy rate (95 per cent literacy as per 2011 census), better internet connectivity (BSNL, Vodafone, Airtel, and Reliance 4G) and possession of smartphones by more than 75 percent of the household.

East Singhbhum district public relation officer (DPRO) Sanjay Kumar who is also a deputy collector at the chief minister�s camp office at Jamshedpur said that it is their ambitious project and they are looking forward to make it success.

�We have done our groundwork for this village since the last one week and found that it has good internet connectivity, high number of literacy rates and availability of smartphones and thus decided to select it for the digital literacy as part of the Central government National Digital Literacy Mission,� said DPRO.

� We are really excited to be a part of the project. We have heard of emails and also seeing them chat with each other using WhatsApp. However, we did not know how to operate them. With the efforts of the administrative officials we can now have access to emails,� said Debashish Mahto (52) gram pradhan of the village.

The DPRO said that they would be completing making of email id of all the 60 household owners within a fortnight.

� We started the process yesterday and it will be completed within a fortnight. The email id will have the name of the village. We are taking help of the pragya kendra operator and the youth boys club in forming of email-ids.� He informed.