(a) the aims and objectives of the Minority Cyber Gram;
(b) whether the objectives of the Minority Cyber Gram have been met;
(c) if so, the details thereof during each of the last three years and the current year;
(d) the budgetary allocations made each year for the above scheme and the number of beneficiaries under the scheme during the aforesaid period; and
(e) the steps taken by the Government to make the programme a success?
MINISTER OF STATE IN THE MINISTRY OF MINORITY AFFAIRS
(SHRI MUKHTAR ABBAS NAQVI)
(a) to (c) A pilot project namely “Minority Cyber Gram ” was launched in February, 2014 for imparting Digital Literacy in a minority dominated village Chanduli in Alwar district, Rajasthan in association with an organization namely Digital Empowerment Foundation. The village has 1300 households. 2600 persons (2 per family) including non minorities in the village were selected for Digital Literacy. The project has been completed and so far 2890 persons have benefited from the programme. After the success of the pilot project, Ministry has mainstreamed the Cyber Gram Programme within the scheme of Multi-sectoral Development Programme (MsDP) from 2014-15, and guidelines were issued to all State Government/ UT administration.
‘Cyber Gram’ has been launched as an initiative under Multi-sectoral Development Programme(MsDP) to provide hands on training in computers to the students of minority communities and enable them to acquire basic Information and Communication Technology (ICT) skills; become digitally literate; actively participate in knowledge based activities; access financial, social and government services and use internet for communications. The initiative covers students of Class VI to Class X belonging to notified minority communities residing in minority concentration areas. Under the initiative, training of 3, 61,257 students of Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Tripura have been approved during 2014-15, with the total cost of Rs.56.17 crore.
(d) ‘Cyber Gram initiative’ is a component under Multi sectoral Development Programme (MsDP) and the expenditure on the initiative is done from the Budgetary Allocation for MsDP. There is no separate allocation for the ‘Cyber Gram’ initiative. As per the reports received, 68,000 students have registered online in 209 madarsas and 36,000 students in 131 madarsas have completed their training.
(e) The Ministry has requested all the States/UTs covered under MsDP to submit the proposals for ‘Cyber Gram initiative’.
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