Digital literacy campaign to attract over 25 lakh volunteers: Javadekar

The Union government's digital transactions awareness campaign has got a tremendous response with over a lakh students from higher educational institutions becoming a part of the drive, HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar said on Thursday.

Launched by the Human Resource Development ministry, the Vittiya Saksharta Abhiyan (VISAKA) involves major knowledge institutions like the IITs, NITs, IIITs, and central universities and colleges with students, faculty and staff playing the role of transforming their immediate day to day living environment into a cashless mode.

"The VISAKA campaign has received tremendous response with more than 1 lakh students of higher educational institutions associating with the campaign within first four days of its launch. We are confident of hhe number of volunteers reaching 25 lakh soon," said Javadekar here.

Launched post the Narendra Modi government's move to demonetise Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, the month-long campaign, began on December 12 and is being carried out in 500 cities with over a lakh population, across the country in the first phase.

During the training module, students will be trained about the opening of account, linking Aadhaar card with bank account, linking Mobile to Aadhaar card and all other required information for digital literacy for transforming cash society to less cash society.

They will be imparted training in Aadhaar based payment system, pre-paid card, Unified Payments Interface (UPI), Mobile wallat, Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD), the minister said.

Describing the campaign as biggest digital transformation of country after independence, Javadekar said that government officers, bankers and administrators will be roped in to impart the training.

He said that many incentives are being offered by the government for adopting digital mode of payment.

Javadekar said the country has adequate wherewithal of 100 crore Aadhaar Cards, 100 crore mobiles, 120 crore saving bank accounts, 77 crore debit cards, 3 crore credit cards to make this digital payments campaign, a big success.

"HRD Ministry will be monitoring public response about this campaign on its website on daily basis," he added.

--IANS

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