PUKAR: How a tribal village's digital push empowered its women

PUKAR's objective was to help villagers secure the benefits due to them under various government welfare schemes and become more aware of their rights

On January 31, 2019, at a joint sitting of both houses of parliament during the Interim Budget Session 2019, President Ram Nath Kovind noted that under the central government’s Digital India initiative, 116,000 villages in India have been digitally connected, 40,000 gram panchayats have WiFi hotspots and all gram panchayats together have 212,000 Common Service Centres.

An initiative in Palghar district, Maharashtra, is closing the gap between making such digital infrastructure available and the next step--providing digital literacy to people in rural areas, so they can directly access the government facilities and