Improved Digital Skills may Solve many problems for India

"Digital Skills for India" is one of the good program which is launched by Intel. As part of this program Intel will work with government to educate across 1000 panchayats targeting 5 million citizens by end of 2015.

 Opinion: I support and am very happy with this programme being launched by Intel. "Digital skills for India" will help the complete ecosystem and improvise in the following respect.

1. Serve as digital seed in Rural India :
   
   
   
   Target to educate across 1000 panchayat mean that there will be many citizens with digital skills in rural area. Who can again impart this skills to other rural citizens. It will be kind of Bandwagon effect - in which rural citizens once they acquire the digital skills will be more effective, efficient and better informed compared to others. The others will then aspire to be more like digitally skilled and hence overall increase in digital education & skill. 
2. Reducing the Digital Divide :
   
    From demographic digital skills perspective, Indian citizens can be divided into two groups : Rural & Urban. Rural population is close to 70% as compared to 30% of the Urban population. Digital skills are way too low in rural area as compared to urban areas. Three main reasons for this are : accessibility, know how of usage & affordability. Intel & India Govt. plans address accessibility & know how issue. But they don't address the affordability as most of the rural folks can't afford ~ $20 internet connection per month. Initiatives similar to "Free Internet" by Facebook can be leveraged here. These initiatives hence are also reducing the digital divide and will convert pen & notebook to tablet & touch-pads.
3. Increase in the digitally skilled labour force:-  
   
   Digital education of the rural India will make india more #DigitalIndia by proportion. Rural population which is composed of 70% of population will help increase in digitally skilled labour force. This will help in reducing supply demand gap for skilled labour. At the same time, it will check the increasing cost of Digital labour. This will keep india competitive in the global market from the cost perspective also, considering the huge competition its observing from lower cost destinations like Philipines.
4. Increase in Market:  
   
   Increase of digital device users will automatically mean demand for more laptops & tablets and other digital devices. This will translated into addition of new demand which were not accessible earlier. Hence bigger market and better opportunities for industry. This is one such way in which companies like Intel will get their investment back in new #DigitalIndia.
5. Improve Economy :
   
   Rural population with digital skills will improve the efficiency of the economy by various ways. Informations related to Weather prediction, price of harvests in various markets, better storage and cultivation ways improving the yields, better access to government, medical facilities etc will greatly improve the efficiency of rural India. This in turns improves the efficiency of overall Indian economy as along with increased productivity it will reduce the loss / wastage and more responsive. 
6. New Local Innovations :-  
   
   New local rural innovations information will be available to wider community and many of such products could be mass produced or used by other needy citizens. One such example is Clay refrigerator - Mitti Cool. These rural innovations can increase the standard of Living in rural India. It will bring name, fame, money as well as better living for rural folks.
7. Reduce urban migration problem:-
   
   There is a big problem happening with rural population moving to urban areas and end up staying in slums. This is adding to more increase in unemployed population in cities as compared to new jobs being created. Most of the cities are not well planned and not capable of handling this huge surge of unemployed unskilled labour. This ends up into various social issues like child malnutrition, violence between local inhabitant and migrants, etc. Digital literacy in rural area will increase job opportunities and hence reduce the migration. This will help in checking the food insecurity problem.

Overall, Its a great initiative by Intel to achieve truly #DigitalIndia. Keep it up your initiatives.