Government’s Digital Awareness Initiative Receives Poor Response from IITs, IIMs & Central Varsities
The government launched Vittiya Saksharta Abhiyan (VISAKA), a digital awareness campaign on December 12, 2016, which received tremendous response from various institutes across the country except IITs, IIMs and central varsities.
Javadekar expressed his happiness that one lakh students registered for digital awareness campaign but expressed his concern that the initiative taken by the government to promote awareness on digital payments received a poor response from reputed central varsities, Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) and Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs). Being premier institutes of India, none of them is among top 20 institutes which contributed the highest number of volunteers.
The government launched Vittiya Saksharta Abhiyan (VISAKA), a digital awareness campaign on December 12, 2016, which received tremendous response from various institutes across the country except the IITs, IIMs and central varsities.
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Surprisingly, none of the students registered their names as volunteers from University of Hyderabad and Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. On the other hand, only 11 volunteers have been registered from Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore. One of the oldest IITs, IIT-Bombay registered only four students for the campaign.
Similarly, 23 students enrolled their names for the campaign from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.
Coming to central varsities, only 23 students from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and 75 students from Delhi University enrolled for the awareness campaign.
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Among the top contributors, a total number of 1,600 students registered for the campaign from Women’s College, Jamshedpur, 500 volunteers from Lovely Professional University and 1,200 volunteers from National College, Trichy.
Prakash Javadekar indicated that only 2% of students have registered for the campaign from central varsities which is not satisfactory. On the other hand, he appreciated the top contributors for the awareness drive.